THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT 

From  the  Library  of 

Henry  Goldman,  Ph.D. 

1886-1972 


THE  PERFECT 
WAGNERITE 


The  Perfect   Wagner- 
ite:  A  Commentary  on 
the  Niblung's  Ring 
By  Bernard  Shaw 


New  York 
Brentano's,  1911 


COPYRIGHT,  1898,  BY  HERBERT  S.  STONE  &  Co. 
COPYRIGHT,  1907,  BY  G.  BERNARD  SHAW 
COPYRIGHT,  1909,  BY  G.  BERNARD  SHAW 
COPYRIGHT,  1909,  BY  BRENTANO'S 


Annex 


Preface  to  the  First  German  Edition 

IN  reading  through  this  German  version  of  my 
book  in  the  Manuscript  of  my  friend  Siegfried 
Trebitsch,  I  was  struck  by  the  inadequacy  of  the 
merely  negative  explanation  given  by  me  of  the 
irrelevance  of  Night  Falls  On  The  Gods  to  the 
general  philosophic  scheme  of  The  Ring.  That 
explanation  is  correct  as  far  as  it  goes;  but,  put  as  I 
put  it,  it  now  seems  to  me  to  suggest  that  the  operatic 
character  of  Night  Falls  On  The  Gods  was  the 
result  of  indifference  or  forgetfulness  produced  by 
the  lapse  of  twenty-five  years  between  the  first  pro- 
jection of  the  work  and  its  completion.  Now  it  is 
clear  that  in  whatever  other  ways  Wagner  may  have 
changed,  he  never  became  careless  and  he  never 
became  indifferent.  I  have  therefore  inserted  a  new 
section  in  which  I  show  how  the  revolutionary 
history  of  Western  Europe  from  the  Liberal  explo- 
sion of  1848  to  the  confused  attempt  at  a  socialist, 
military,  and  municipal  administration  in  Paris  in 
1871  (that  is  to  say,  from  the  beginning  of  The 
Niblung's  Ring  by  Wagner  to  the  long-delayed  com- 
pletion of  Night  Falls  On  The  Gods),  demonstrated 


vi  The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

practically  that  the  passing  away  of  the  present  order 
was  going  to  be  a  much  more  complicated  business 
than  it  appears  in  Wagner's  Siegfried.  I  have  there- 
fore interpolated  a  new  chapter  which  will  perhaps 
induce  some  readers  of  the  original  English  text  to 
read  the  book  again  in  German. 

For  some  time  to  come,  indeed,  I  shall  have  to  refer 
English  readers  to  this  German  edition  as  the  most 
complete  in  existence. 

My  obligation  to  Herr  Trebitsch  for  making  me  a 
living  German  author  instead  of  merely  a  translated 
English  one  is  so  great  that  I  am  bound  to  point  out 
that  he  is  not  responsible  for  my  views  or  Wagner's, 
and  that  it  is  as  an  artist  and  a  man  of  letters,  and 
not  as  a  propagandist,  that  he  is  conveying  to  the 
German  speaking  peoples  political  criticisms  which 
occasionally  reflect  on  contemporary  authorities  with 
a  European  reputation  for  sensitiveness.  And  as  the 
very  sympathy  which  makes  his  translations  so  excel- 
lent may  be  regarded  with  suspicion,  let  me  hasten 
to  declare  I  am  bound  to  Germany  by  the  ties  that 
hold  my  nature  most  strongly.  Not  that  I  like  the 
average  German:  nobody  does,  even  in  his  own  coun- 
try. But  then  the  average  man  is  not  popular  any- 
where; and  as  no  German  considers  himself  an  aver- 
age one,  each  reader  will,  as  an  exceptional  man, 
sympathize  with  my  dislike  of  the  common  herd. 
And  if  I  cannot  love  the  typical  modern  German,  I 
can  at  least  pity  and  understand  him.  His  worst 
fault  is  that  he  cannot  see  that  it  is  possible  to  have 
too  much  of  a  good  thing.  Being  convinced  that 


Preface  to  the  First  German  Edition  vii 

duty,  industry,  education,  loyalty,  patriotism  and  re- 
spectability are  good  things  (and  I  am  magnanimous 
enough  to  admit  that  they  are  not  altogether  bad  things 
when  taken  in  strict  moderation  at  the  right  time  and 
in  the  right  place),  he  indulges  in  them  on  all  occasions 
shamelessly  and  excessively.  He  commits  hideous 
crimes  when  crime  is  presented  to  him  as  part  of  his 
duty;  his  craze  for  work  is  more  ruinous  than  the 
craze  for  drink;  when  he  can  afford  secondary 
education  for  his  sons  you  find  three  out  of  every 
five  of  them  with  their  minds  lamed  for  life  by 
examinations  which  only  a  thoroughly  wooden  head 
could  go  through  with  impunity;  and  if  a  king  is  patri- 
otic and  respectable  (few  kings  are)  he  puts  up  statues 
to  him  and  exalts  him  above  Charlemagne  and 
Henry  the  Fowler.  And  when  he  meets  a  man  of 
genius,  he  instinctively  insults  him,  starves  him,  and, 
if  possible,  imprisons  and  kills  him. 

Now  I  do  not  pretend  to  be  perfect  myself.  Hea- 
ven knows  I  have  to  struggle  hard  enough  every  day 
with  what  the  Germans  call  my  higher  impulses.  I 
know  too  well  the  temptation  to  be  moral,  to  be  self- 
sacrificing,  to  be  loyal  and  patriotic,  to  be  respectable 
and  well-spoken  of.  But  I  wrestle  with  it  and — as 
far  as  human  fraility  will  allow — conquer  it,  whereas 
the  German  abandons  himself  to  it  without  scruple 
or  reflection,  and  is  actually  proud  of  his  pious 
intemperance  and  self-indulgence.  Nothing  will 
cure  him  of  this  mania.  It  may  end  in  starvation, 
crushing  taxation,  suppression  of  all  freedom  to  try 
new  social  experiments  and  reform  obsolete  institu- 


viii  The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

tions,  in  snobbery,  jobbery,  idolatry,  and  an  omni- 
present tyranny  in  which  his  doctor  and  his  school- 
master, his  lawyer  and  his  priest,  coerce  him  worse 
than  any  official  or  drill  sergeant:  no  matter:  it  is 
respectable,  says  the  German,  therefore  it  must  be 
good,  and  cannot  be  carried  too  far;  and  everybody 
who  rebels  against  it  must  be  a  rascal.  Even  the 
Social-Democrats  in  Germany  differ  from  the  rest 
only  in  carrying  academic  orthodoxy  beyond  human 
endurance — beyond  even  German  endurance.  I  am 
a  Socialist  and  a  Democrat  myself,  the  hero  of  a 
hundred  platforms,  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  most 
notable  Socialist  organizations  in  England.  I  am  as 
conspicuous  in  English  Socialism  as  Bebel  is  in 
German  Socialism;  but  do  you  suppose  that  the 
German  Social-Democrats  tolerate  me  ?  Not  a  bit 
of  it.  I  have  begged  again  and  again  to  be  taken  to 
the  bosom  of  my  German  comrades.  I  have  pleaded 
that  the  Super-Proletarians  of  all  lands  should  unite. 
I  have  pointed  out  that  the  German  Social-Demo- 
cratic party  has  done  nothing  at  its  Congresses  for 
the  last  ten  years  except  the  things  I  told  them  to  do 
ten  years  before,  and  that  its  path  is  white  with  the 
bones  of  the  Socialist  superstitions  I  and  my  fellow 
Fabians  have  slain.  Useless.  They  do  not  care  a 
rap  whether  I  am  a  Socialist  or  not.  All  they  want 
to  know  is ;  Am  I  orthodox  ?  Am  I  correct  in  my 
revolutionary  views  ?  Am  I  reverent  to  the  revolu- 
tionary authorities  ?  Because  I  am  a  genuine  free- 
thinker they  look  at  me  as  a  policeman  looks  at  a 
midnight  prowler  or  as  a  Berlin  bourgeois  looks  at  a 


Preface  to  the  First  German  Edition  ix 

suspicious  foreigner.  They  ask  "  Do  you  believe  that 
Marx  was  omniscient  and  infallible;  that  Engels 
was  his  prophet;  that  Bebel  and  Singer  are  his 
inspired  apostles;  and  that  Das  Kapital  is  the  Bible  ?" 
Hastening  in  my  innocence  to  clear  myself  of  what  I 
regard  as  an  accusation  of  credulity  and  ignorance,  I 
assure  them  earnestly  that  I  know  ten  times  as  much 
of  economics  and  a  hundred  times  as  much  of 
practical  administration  as  Marx  did;  that  I  knew 
Engels  personally  and  rather  liked  him  as  a  witty  and 
amiable  old  1848  veteran  who  despised  modern 
Socialism;  that  I  regard  Bebel  and  Singer  as  men  of 
like  passions  with  myself,  but  considerably  less  ad- 
vanced; and  that  I  read  Das  Kapital  in  the  year 
1882  or  thereabouts,  and  still  consider  it  one  of  the 
most  important  books  of  the  nineteenth  century 
because  of  its  power  of  changing  the  minds  of  those 
who  read  it,  in  spite  of  its  unsound  capitalist  econom- 
ics, its  parade  of  quotations  from  books  which  the 
author  had  either  not  read  or  not  understood,  its 
affectation  of  algebraic  formulas,  and  its  general 
attempt  to  disguise  a  masterpiece  of  propagandist 
journalism  and  prophetic  invective  as  a  drily  scienti- 
fic treatise  of  the  sort  that  used  to  impose  on  people 
in  1860,  when  any  book  that  pretended  to  be  scienti- 
fic was  accepted  as  a  Bible.  In  those  days  Darwin  and 
Helmholtz  were  the  real  fathers  of  the  Church;  and 
nobody  would  listen  to  religion,  poetry  or  rhetoric;  so 
that  even  Socialism  had  to  call  itself  "scientific,"  and 
predict  the  date  of  the  revolution,  as  if  it  were  a 
comet,  by  calculations  founded  on  "historic  laws." 


x  The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

To  my  amazement  these  reasonable  remarks  were 
received  as  hideous  blasphemies;  none  of  the  party 
papers  were  allowed  to  print  any  word  of  mine;  the 
very  Revisionists  themselves  found  that  the  scandal 
of  my  heresy  damaged  them  more  than  my  support 
aided  them;  and  I  found  myself  an  outcast  from 
German  Social-Democracy  at  the  moment  when, 
thanks  to  Trebitsch,  the  German  bourgeoisie  and 
nobility  began  to  smile  on  me,  seduced  by  the  pleasure 
of  playing  with  fire,  and  perhaps  by  Agnes  Sorma's 
acting  as  Candida. 

Thus  you  may  see  that  when  a  German,  by  becom- 
ing a  Social-Democrat,  throws  off  all  the  bonds  of 
convention,  and  stands  free  from  all  allegiance  to 
established  religion,  law,  order,  patriotism,  and 
learning,  he  promptly  uses  his  freedom  to  put  on  a 
heavier  set  of  chains;  expels  anti-militarists  with  the 
bloodthirstiest  martial  anti-foreign  ardor;  and  gives 
the  Kaiser  reason  to  thank  heaven  that  he  was  born 
in  the  comparative  freedom  and  Laodicean  tolerance 
of  Kingship,  and  not  in  the  Calvinistic  bigotry  and 
pedantry  of  Marxism. 

Why,  then,  you  may  ask,  do  I  say  that  I  am  bound 
to  Germany  by  the  ties  that  hold  my  nature  most 
strongly  ?  Very  simply  because  I  should  have  perished 
of  despair  in  my  youth  but  for  the  world  created  for 
me  by  that  great  German  dynasty  which  began  with 
Bach  and  will  perhaps  not  end  with  Richard  Strauss. 
Do  not  suppose  for  a  moment  that  I  learnt  my  art 
from  English  men  of  letters.  True,  they  showed  me 
how  to  handle  English  words;  but  if  I  had  known  no 


Preface  to  the  First  German  Edition  xi 

more  than  that,  my  works  would  never  have  crossed 
the  Channel.  My  masters  were  the  masters  of  a 
universal  language :  they  were,  to  go  from  summit  to 
summit,  Bach,  Handel,  Haydn,  Mozart,  Beethoven 
and  Wagner.  Had  the  Germans  understood  any  of 
these  men,  they  would  have  hanged  them.  For- 
tunately they  did  not  understand  them,  and  therefore 
only  neglected  them  until  they  were  dead,  after  which 
they  learnt  to  dance  to  their  tunes  with  an  easy 
conscience.  For  their  sakes  Germany  stands  con- 
secrated as  the  Holy  Land  of  the  capitalist  age,  just 
as  Italy,  for  its  painters'  sakes,  is  the  Holy  Land  of 
the  early  unvulgarized  Renascence;  France,  for  its 
builders'  sakes,  of  the  age  of  Christian  chivalry  and 
faith;  and  Greece,  for  its  sculptors'  sakes,  of  the 
Periclean  age. 

These  Holy  Lands  are  my  fatherlands:  in  them 
alone  am  I  truly  at  home:  all  my  work  is  but  to 
bring  the  whole  world  under  this  sanctification. 

And  so,  O  worthy,  respectable,  dutiful,  patriotic, 
brave,  industrious  German  reader,  you  who  used  to 
fear  only  God  and  your  own  conscience,  and  now  fear 
nothing  at  all,  here  is  my  book  for  you;  and — in  all 
sincerity — much  good  may  it  do  you! 

LONDON,  23rd.  October  1907. 


Preface  to  the  Second  Edition 

THE  preparation  of  a  Second  Edition  of  this  booklet 
is  quite  the  most  unexpected  literary  task  that  has 
ever  been  set  me.  When  it  first  appeared  I  was 
ungrateful  enough  to  remonstrate  with  its  publisher 
for  printing,  as  I  thought,  more  copies  than  the  most 
sanguine  Wagnerite  could  ever  hope  to  sell.  But 
the  result  proved  that  exactly  one  person  buys  a  copy 
on  every  day  in  the  year,  including  Sundays;  and  so, 
in  the  process  of  the  suns,  a  reprint  has  become 
necessary. 

Save  a  few  verbal  slips  of  no  importance,  I  have 
found  nothing  to  alter  in  this  edition.  As  usual,  the 
only  protests  the  book  has  elicited  are  protests,  not 
against  the  opinions  it  expresses,  but  against  the  facts 
it  records.  There  are  people  who  cannot  bear  to  be 
told  that  their  hero  was  associated  with  a  famous 
Anarchist  in  a  rebellion;  that  he  was  proclaimed  as 
"wanted"  by  the  police;  that  he  wrote  revolutionary 
pamphlets;  and  that  his  picture  of  Niblunghome 
under  the  reign  of  Alberic  is  a  poetic  vision  of 
unregulated  industrial  capitalism  as  it  was  made 
known  in  Germany  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 


xiv  The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

century  by  Engels's  Condition  of  the  Laboring 
classes  in  England.  They  frantically  deny  these 
facts,  and  then  declare  that  I  have  connected  them 
with  Wagner  in  a  paroxysm  of  senseless  perversity. 
I  am  sorry  I  have  hurt  them;  and  I  appeal  to  charit- 
able publishers  to  bring  out  a  new  life  of  Wagner, 
which  shall  describe  him  as  a  court  musician  of  un- 
questioned fashion  and  orthodoxy,  and  a  pillar  of  the 
most  exclusive  Dresden  circles.  Such  a  work,  would, 
I  believe,  have  a  large  sale,  and  be  read  with  satisfac- 
tion and  reassurance  by  many  lovers  of  Wagner's 
music. 

As  to  my  much  demurred-to  relegation  of  Night 
Falls  On  The  Gods  to  the  category  of  grand  opera,  I 
have  nothing  to  add  or  withdraw.  Such  a  classifica- 
tion is  to  me  as  much  a  matter  of  fact  as  the  Dresden 
rising  or  the  police  proclamation;  but  I  shall  not 
pretend  that  it  is  a  matter  of  such  fact  as  everybody's 
judgment  can  grapple  with.  People  who  prefer 
grand  opera  to  serious  music-drama  naturally  resent 
my  placing  a  very  grand  opera  below  a  very  serious 
music-drama.  The  ordinary  lover  of  Shakespeare 
would  equally  demur  to  my  placing  his  popular 
catchpenny  plays,  of  which  As  You  Like  It  is  an 
avowed  type,  below  true  Shakespearean  plays  like 
Measure  for  Measure.  I  cannot  help  that.  Popular 
dramas  and  operas  may  have  overwhelming  merits  as 
enchanting  make-believes;  but  a  poet's  sincerest 
vision  of  the  world  must  always  take  precedence  of 
his  prettiest  fool's  paradise. 

As   many   English   Wagnerites   seem   to   be   still 


Preface  to  the  Second  Edition      xv 

under  the  impression  that  Wagner  composed  Rienzi 
in  his  youth,  Tannhauser  and  Lohengrin  in  his  middle 
age,  and  The  Ring  in  his  later  years,  may  I  again 
remind  them  that  The  Ring  was  the  result  of  a 
political  convulsion  which  occurred  when  Wagner 
was  only  thirty-six,  and  that  the  poem  was  completed 
when  he  was  forty,  with  thirty  more  years  of  work 
before  him  ?  It  is  as  much  a  first  essay  in  political 
philosophy  as  Die  Feen  is  a  first  essay  in  romantic 
opera.  The  attempt  to  recover  its  spirit  twenty  years 
later,  when  the  music  of  Night  Falls  On  The  Gods 
was  added,  was  an  attempt  to  revive  the  barricades 
of  Dresden  in  the  Temple  of  the  Grail.  Only  those 
who  have  never  had  any  political  enthusiasms  to 
survive  can  believe  that  such  an  attempt  could 
succeed.  G.  B.  S. 

LONDON,  1901. 


Preface  to  the  First  Edition 

THIS  book  is  a  commentary  on  The  Ring  of  the 
Niblungs,  Wagner's  chief  work.  I  offer  it  to  those 
enthusiastic  admirers  of  Wagner  who  are  unable  to 
follow  his  ideas,  and  do  not  in  the  least  understand 
the  dilemma  of  Wotan,  though  they  are  filled  with 
indignation  at  the  irreverence  of  the  Philistines  who 
frankly  avow  that  they  find  the  remarks  of  the  god 
too  often  tedious  and  nonsensical.  Now  to  be  devoted 
to  Wagner  merely  as  a  dog  is  devoted  to  his  master, 
sharing  a  few  elementary  ideas,  appetites  and  emo- 
tions with  him,  and,  for  the  rest,  reverencing  his 
superiority  without  understanding  it,  is  no  true 
Wagnerism.  Yet  nothing  better  is  possible  without 
a  stock  of  ideas  common  to  master  and  disciple. 
Unfortunately,  the  ideas  of  the  revolutionary  Wagner 
of  1848  are  taught  neither  by  the  education  nor  the 
experience  of  English  and  American  gentlemen- 
amateurs,  who  are  almost  always  political  mug- 
wumps, and  hardly  ever  associate  with  revolutionists. 
The  earlier  attempts  to  translate  his  numerous  pam- 
phlets and  essays  into  English,  resulted  in  ludicrous 
mixtures  of  pure  nonsense  with  the  absurdest  dis- 


xviii     Preface  to  the  First  Edition 

tortions  of  his  ideas  into  the  ideas  of  the  translators. 
We  now  have  a  translation  which  is  a  masterpiece 
of  interpretation  and  an  eminent  addition  to  our 
literature;  but  that  is  not  because  its  author,  Mr. 
Ashton  Ellis,  knows  the  German  dictionary  better 
than  his  predecessors.  He  is  simply  in  possession 
of  Wagner's  ideas,  which  were  to  them  inconceivable. 
All  I  pretend  to  do  in  this  book  is  to  impart  the 
ideas  which  are  most  likely  to  be  lacking  in  the  con- 
ventional Englishman's  equipment.  I  came  by  them 
myself  much  as  Wagner  did,  having  learnt  more  about 
music  than  about  anything  else  in  my  youth,  and 
sown  my  political  wild  oats  subsequently  in  the  revolu- 
tionary school.  This  combination  is  not  common  in 
England;  and  as  I  seem,  so  far,  to  be  the  only  publicly 
articulate  result  of  it,  I  venture  to  add  my  commentary 
to  what  has  already  been  written  by  musicians  who 
are  no  revolutionists,  and  revolutionists  who  are  no 
musicians.  G.  B.  S. 


Preliminary  Encouragements        .        .  i 

The  Ring  of  the  Niblungs     ...  5 

The  Rhine  Gold            ....  5 

Wagner  as  Revolutionist       .        .        .  27 

The  Valkyries       .         .                 .         .  35 

Siegfried 47 

Siegfried  as  Protestant ....  65 

Night  Falls  On  The  Gods    ...  81 

Why  He  Changed  His  Mind      .         .  98 

Wagner's  Own  Explanation  .         .         .  no 

The  Music  of  The  Ring        .        .        .  119 

The  Old  and  the  New  Music .        .        .  129 

The  Nineteenth  Century        .         .         .  135 

The  Music  of  the  Future       .        .        .  142 

Bayreuth       .         .         .        .                 .  144 


The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

PRELIMINARY  ENCOURAGEMENTS 

A  FEW  of  these  will  be  welcome  to  the  ordinary 
citizen  visiting  the  theatre  to  satisfy  his  curiosity,  or 
his  desire  to  be  in  the  fashion,  by  witnessing  a  repre- 
sentation of  Richard  Wagner's  famous  Ring  of  the 
Niblungs. 

First,  The  Ring,  with  all  its  gods  and  giants  and 
dwarfs,  its  water-maidens  and  Valkyries,  its  wishing- 
cap,  magic  ring,  enchanted  sword,  and  miraculous 
treasure,  is  a  drama  of  today,  and  not  of  a  remote 
and  fabulous  antiquity.  It  could  not  have  been 
written  before  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  because  it  deals  with  events  which  were 
only  then  consummating  themselves.  Unless  the 
spectator  recognizes  in  it  an  image  of  the  life  he  is 
himself  righting  his  way  through,  it  must  needs 
appear  to  him  a  monstrous  development  of  the 
Christmas  pantomimes,  spun  out  here  and  there 
into  intolerable  lengths  of  dull  conversation  by  the 
principal  baritone.  Fortunately,  even  from  this 
point  of  view,  The  Ring  is  full  of  extraordinarily 


2  The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

attractive  episodes,  both  orchestral  and  dramatic. 
The  nature  music  alone — music  of  river  and  rainbow, 
fire  and  forest — is  enough  to  bribe  people  with  any 
love  of  the  country  in  them  to  endure  the  passages 
of  political  philosophy,  in  the  sure  hope  of  a  prettier 
page  to  come.  Everybody,  too,  can  enjoy  the  love 
music,  the  hammer  and  anvil  music,  the  clumping 
of  the  giants,  the  tune  of  the  young  woodsman's 
horn,  the  trilling  of  the  bird,  the  dragon  music  and 
nightmare  music  and  thunder  and  lightning  music, 
the  profusion  of  simple  melody,  the  sensuous  charm 
of  the  orchestration:  in  short,  the  vast  extent  of 
common  ground  between  The  Ring  and  the  ordinary 
music  we  use  for  play  and  pleasure.  Hence  it  is  that 
the  four  separate  music-plays  of  which  it  is  built 
have  become  popular  throughout  Europe  as  operas. 
We  shall  presently  see  that  one  of  them,  Night  Falls 
On  The  Gods,  actually  is  an  opera. 

It  is  generally  understood,  however,  that  there  is 
an  inner  ring  of  superior  persons  to  whom  the  whole 
work  has  a  most  urgent  and  searching  philosophic 
and  social  significance.  I  profess  to  be  such  a  supe- 
rior person;  and  I  write  this  pamphlet  for  the  assist- 
ance of  those  who  wish  to  be  introduced  to  the  work 
on  equal  terms  with  that  inner  circle  of  adepts. 

My  second  encouragement  is  addressed  to  modest 
citizens  who  may  suppose  themselves  to  be  disqualified 
from  enjoying  The  Ring  by  their  technical  ignorance 
of  music.  They  may  dismiss  all  such  misgivings 
speedily  and  confidently.  If  the  sound  of  music  has 
any  power  to  move  them,  they  will  find  that  Wagner 


Preliminary  Encouragements       3 

exacts  nothing  further.  There  is  not  a  single  bar  of 
"classical  music"  in  The  Ring — not  a  note  in  it  that 
has  any  other  point  than  the  single  direct  point  of 
giving  musical  expression  to  the  drama.  In  classical 
music  there  are,  as  the  analytical  programs  tell  us, 
first  subjects  and  second  subjects,  free  fantasias, 
recapitulations,  and  codas;  there  are  fugues,  with 
counter-subjects,  strettos,  and  pedal  points;  there  are 
passacaglias  on  ground  basses,  canons  ad  hypodia- 
pente,  and  other  ingenuities,  which  have,  after  all, 
stood  or  fallen  by  their  prettiness  as  much  as  the 
simplest  folk-tune.  Wagner  is  never  driving  at  any- 
thing of  this  sort  any  more  than  Shakespeare  in  his 
plays  is  driving  at  such  ingenuities  of  verse-making 
as  sonnets,  triolets,  and  the  like.  And  this  is  why  he 
is  so  easy  for  the  natural  musician  who  has  had  no 
academic  teaching.  The  professors,  when  Wagner's 
music  is  played  to  them,  exclaim  at  once  "What  is 
this  ?  Is  it  aria,  or  recitative  ?  Is  there  no  cabaletta  to 
it — not  even  a  full  close  ?  Why  was  that  discord  not 
prepared;  and  why  does  he  not  resolve  it  correctly? 
How  dare  he  indulge  in  those  scandalous  and  illicit 
transitions  into  a  key  that  has  not  one  note  in  common 
with  the  key  he  has  just  left  ?  Listen  to  those  false 
relations!  What  does  he  want  with  six  drums  and 
eight  horns  when  Mozart  worked  miracles  with  two 
of  each  ?  The  man  is  no  musician."  The  layman 
neither  knows  nor  cares  about  any  of  these  things. 
If  Wagner  were  to  turn  aside  from  his  straight- 
forward dramatic  purpose  to  propitiate  the  professors 
with  correct  exercises  in  sonata  form,  his  music  would 


4  The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

at  once  become  unintelligible  to  the  unsophisticated 
spectator,  upon  whom  the  familiar  and  dreaded 
"classical"  sensation  would  descend  like  the  influ- 
enza. Nothing  of  the  kind  need  be  dreaded.  The 
unskilled,  untaught  musician  may  approach  Wag- 
ner boldly;  for  there  is  no  possibility  of  a  misunder- 
standing between  them:  The  Ring  music  is  per- 
fectly single  and  simple.  It  is  the  adept  musician 
of  the  old  school  who  has  everything  to  unlearn :  and 
him  I  leave,  unpitied,  to  his  fate. 


THE  RING  OF  THE  NIBLUNGS 

THE  RING  consists  of  four  plays,  intended  to  be  per- 
formed on  four  successive  evenings,  entitled  The 
Rhine  Gold  (a  prologue  to  the  other  three),  The 
Valkyries,  Siegfried,  and  Night  Falls  On  The  Gods; 
or,  in  the  original  German,  Das  Rheingold,  Die 
Walkiire,  Siegfried,  and  Die  Gotterdammerung. 

THE  RHINE  GOLD 

Let  me  assume  for  a  moment  that  you  are  a  young 
and  good-looking  woman.  Try  to  imagine  yourself 
in  that  character  at  Klondyke  five  years  ago.  The 
place  is  teeming  with  gold.  If  you  are  content  to 
leave  the  gold  alone,  as  the  wise  leave  flowers  with- 
out plucking  them,  enjoying  with  perfect  naivete  its 
color  and  glitter  and  preciousness,  no  human  being 
will  ever  be  the  worse  for  your  knowledge  of  it;  and 
whilst  you  remain  in  that  frame  of  mind  the  golden 
age  will  endure. 

Now  suppose  a  man  comes  along:  a  man  who  has 
no  sense  of  the  golden  age,  nor  any  power  of  living 
in  the  present:  a  man  with  common  desires,  cupid- 


6  The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

ities,  ambitions,  just  like  most  of  the  men  you  know. 
Suppose  you  reveal  to  that  man  the  fact  that  if  he 
will  only  pluck  this  gold  up,  and  turn  it  into  money, 
millions  of  men,  driven  by  the  invisible  whip  of 
hunger,  will  toil  underground  and  overground  night 
and  day  to  pile  up  more  and  more  gold  for  him  until 
he  is  master  of  the  world!  You  will  find  that  the 
prospect  will  not  tempt  him  so  much  as  you  might 
imagine,  because  it  involves  some  distasteful  trouble 
to  himself  to  start  with,  and  because  there  is  some- 
thing else  within  his  reach  involving  no  distasteful 
toil,  which  he  desires  more  passionately;  and  that  is 
yourself.  So  long  as  he  is  preoccupied  with  love  of 
you,  the  gold,  and  all  that  it  implies,  will  escape  him: 
the  golden  age  will  endure.  Not  until  he  forswears 
love  will  he  stretch  out  his  hand  to  the  gold,  and  found 
the  Plutonic  empire  for  himself.  But  the  choice  be- 
tween love  and  gold  may  not  rest  altogether  with  him. 
He  may  be  an  ugly,  ungracious,  unamiable  person, 
whose  affections  may  seem  merely  ludicrous  and  de- 
spicable to  you.  In  that  case,  you  may  repulse  him, 
and  most  bitterly  humiliate  and  disappoint  him. 
What  is  left  to  him  then  but  to  curse  the  love  he  can 
never  win,  and  turn  remorselessly  to  the  gold  ?  With 
that,  he  will  make  short  work  of  your  golden  age, 
and  leave  you  lamenting  its  lost  thoughtlessness  and 
sweetness. 

In  due  time  the  gold  of  Klondyke  will  find  its  way 
to  the  great  cities  of  the  world.  But  the  old  dilemma 
will  keep  continually  reproducing  itself.  The  man 
who  will  turn  his  back  on  love,  and  upon  all  the  fruitful 


Scene  i  The  Rhine  Gold  7 

creative,  life-pursuing  activities  into  which  the  loftiest 
human  energy  can  develop  it,  and  will  set  himself 
single-heartedly  to  gather  gold  in  an  exultant  dream 
of  wielding  its  Plutonic  powers,  will  find  the  treasure 
yielding  quickly  to  his  touch.  But  few  men  will  make 
this  sacrifice  voluntarily.  Not  until  the  Plutonic 
power  is  so  strongly  set  up  that  the  higher  human 
impulses  are  suppressed  as  rebellious,  and  even  the 
mere  appetites  are  denied,  starved,  and  insulted 
when  they  cannot  purchase  their  satisfaction  with 
gold,  are  the  energetic  spirits  driven  to  build  their 
lives  upon  riches.  How  inevitable  that  course  has 
become  to  us  is  plain  enough  to  those  who  have 
the  power  of  understanding  what  they  see  as  they 
look  at  the  plutocratic  societies  of  our  modern 
capitals. 

First  Scene 

Here,  then,  is  the  subject  of  the  first  scene  of  The 
Rhine  Gold.  As  you  sit  waiting  for  the  curtain  to 
rise,  you  suddenly  catch  the  booming  ground-tone  of 
a  mighty  river.  It  becomes  plainer,  clearer:  you  get 
nearer  to  the  surface,  and  catch  the  green  light  and 
the  flights  of  bubbles.  Then  the  curtain  goes  up  and 
you  see  what  you  heard — the  depths  of  the  Rhine, 
with  three  strange  fairy  fishes,  half  water-maidens, 
singing  and  enjoying  themselves  exuberantly.  They 
are  not  singing  barcarolles  or  ballads  about  the 
Lorely  and  her  fated  lovers,  but  simply  trolling  any 
nonsense  that  comes  into  their  heads  in  time  to  the 
dancing  of  the  water  and  the  rhythm  of  their  swim- 


8  The  Perfect  Wagnerite       Scene  i 

ming.  It  is  the  golden  age;  and  the  attraction  of  this 
spot  for  the  Rhine  maidens  is  a  lump  of  the  Rhine 
gold,  which  they  value,  in  an  entirely  uncommercial 
way,  for  its  bodily  beauty  and  splendor.  Just  at 
present  it  is  eclipsed,  because  the  sun  is  not  striking 
down  through  the  water. 

Presently  there  comes  a  poor  devil  of  a  dwarf 
stealing  along  the  slippery  rocks  of  the  river  bed,  a 
creature  with  energy  enough  to  make  him  strong  of 
body  and  fierce  of  passion,  but  with  a  brutish  narrow- 
ness of  intelligence  and  selfishness  of  imagination :  too 
stupid  to  see  that  his  own  welfare  can  only  be  com- 
passed as  part  of  the  welfare  of  the  world,  too  full  of 
brute  force  not  to  grab  vigorously  at  his  own  gain. 
Such  dwarfs  are  quite  common  in  London.  He  comes 
now  with  a  fruitful  impulse  in  him,  in  search  of  what 
he  lacks  in  himself,  beauty,  lightness  of  heart,  im- 
agination, music.  The  Rhine  maidens,  representing 
all  these  to  him,  fill  him  with  hope  and  longing;  and 
he  never  considers  that  he  has  nothing  to  offer 
that  they  could  possibly  desire,  being  by  natural 
limitation  incapable  of  seeing  anything  from  anyone 
else's  point  of  view.  With  perfect  simplicity,  he  offers 
himself  as  a  sweetheart  to  them.  But  they  are 
thoughtless,  elemental,  only  half  real  things,  much 
like  modern  young  ladies.  That  the  poor  dwarf  is 
repulsive  to  their  sense  of  physical  beauty  and  their 
romantic  conception  of  heroism,  that  he  is  ugly  and 
awkward,  greedy  and  ridiculous,  disposes  for  them 
of  his  claim  to  live  and  love.  They  mock  him  atro- 
ciously, pretending  to  fall  in  love  with  him  at  first 


Scene  i  The  Rhine  Gold  9 

sight,  and  then  slipping  away  and  making  game  of 
him,  heaping  ridicule  and  disgust  on  the  poor  wretch 
until  he  is  beside  himself  with  mortification  and  rage. 
They  forget  him  when  the  water  begins  to  glitter  in 
the  sun,  and  the  gold  to  reflect  its  glory.  They 
break  into  ecstatic  worship  of  their  treasure;  and 
though  they  know  the  parable  of  Klondyke  quite 
well,  they  have  no  fear  that  the  gold  will  be  wrenched 
away  by  the  dwarf,  since  it  will  yield  to  no  one  who 
has  not  forsworn  love  for  it,  and  it  is  in  pursuit  of 
love  that  he  has  come  to  them.  They  forget  that  they 
have  poisoned  that  desire  in  him  by  their  mockery  and 
denial  of  it,  and  that  he  now  knows  that  life  will  give 
him  nothing  that  he  cannot  wrest  from  it  by  the 
Plutonic  power.  It  is  just  as  if  some  poor,  rough, 
vulgar,  coarse  fellow  were  to  offer  to  take  his  part  in 
aristocratic  society,  and  be  snubbed  into  the  know- 
ledge that  only  as  a  millionaire  could  he  ever  hope  to 
bring  that  society  to  his  feet  and  buy  himself  a 
beautiful  and  refined  wife.  His  choice  is  forced  on 
him.  He  forswears  love  as  thousands  of  us  forswear 
it  every  day;  and  in  a  moment  the  gold  is  in  his  grasp, 
and  he  disappears  in  the  depths,  leaving  the  water- 
fairies  vainly  screaming  "  Stop  thief!"  whilst  the  river 
seems  to  plunge  into  darkness  and  sink  from  us  as  we 
rise  to  the  cloud  regions  above. 

And  now,  what  forces  are  there  in  the  world  to 
resist  Alberic,  our  dwarf,  in  his  new  character  of 
sworn  plutocrat  ?  He  is  soon  at  work  wielding  the 
power  of  the  gold.  For  his  gain,  hordes  of  his 
fellow-creatures  are  thenceforth  condemned  to  slave 


10  The  Perfect  Wagnerite       Scene  i 

miserably,  overground  and  underground,  lashed  to 
their  work  by  the  invisible  whip  of  starvation.  They 
never  see  him,  any  more  than  the  victims  of  our 
"dangerous  trades"  ever  see  the  shareholders  whose 
power  is  nevertheless  everywhere,  driving  them  to 
destruction.  The  very  wealth  they  create  with  their 
labor  becomes  an  additional  force  to  impoverish 
them;  for  as  fast  as  they  make  it  it  slips  from  their 
hands  into  the  hands  of  their  master,  and  makes  him 
mightier  than  ever.  You  can  see  the  process  for 
yourself  in  every  civilized  country  today,  where 
millions  of  people  toil  in  want  and  disease  to  heap  up 
more  wealth  for  our  Alberics,  laying  up  nothing  for 
themselves,  except  sometimes  horrible  and  agonizing 
disease  and  the  certainty  of  premature  death.  All 
this  part  of  the  story  is  frightfully  real,  frightfully 
present,  frightfully  modern;  and  its  effects  on  our 
social  life  are  so  ghastly  and  ruinous  that  we  no 
longer  know  enough  of  happiness  to  be  discomposed 
by  it.  It  is  only  the  poet,  with  his  vision  of  what 
life  might  be,  to  whom  these  things  are  unendurable. 
If  we  were  a  race  of  poets  we  would  make  an  end 
of  them  before  the  end  of  this  miserable  century. 
Being  a  race  of  moral  dwarfs  instead,  we  think  them 
highly  respectable,  comfortable  and  proper,  and 
allow  them  to  breed  and  multiply  their  evil  in  all 
directions.  If  there  were  no  higher  power  in  the 
world  to  work  against  Alberic,  the  end  of  it  would  be 
utter  destruction. 

Such  a  force  there  is,  however;  and  it  is  called  God- 
head.    The  mysterious  thing  we  call  life  organizes 


Scene  i  The  Rhine  Gold  1 1 

itself  into  all  living  shapes,  bird,  beast,  beetle  and  fish, 
rising  to  the  human  marvel  in  cunning  dwarfs  and  in 
laborious  muscular  giants,  capable,  these  last,  of 
enduring  toil,  willing  to  buy  love  and  life,  not  with 
suicidal  curses  and  renunciations,  but  with  patient 
manual  drudgery  in  the  service  of  higher  powers. 
And  these  higher  powers  are  called  into  existence  by 
the  same  self-organization  of  life  still  more  wonder- 
fully into  rare  persons  who  may  by  comparison  be 
called  gods,  creatures  capable  of  thought,  whose 
aims  extend  far  beyond  the  satisfaction  of  their 
bodily  appetites  and  personal  affections,  since  they 
perceive  that  it  is  only  by  the  establishment  of  a 
social  order  founded  on  common  bonds  of  moral 
faith  that  the  world  can  rise  from  mere  savagery. 
But  how  is  this  order  to  be  set  up  by  Godhead  in  a 
world  of  stupid  giants,  since  these  thoughtless  ones 
pursue  only  their  narrower  personal  ends  and  can 
by  no  means  understand  the  aims  of  a  god  ?  God- 
head, face  to  face  with  Stupidity,  must  compromise. 
Unable  to  enforce  on  the  world  the  pure  law  of 
thought,  it  must  resort  to  a  mechanical  law  of  com- 
mandments to  be  enforced  by  brute  punishments  and 
the  destruction  of  the  disobedient.  And  however  care- 
fully these  laws  are  framed  to  represent  the  highest 
thoughts  of  the  framers  at  the  moment  of  their  pro- 
mulgation, before  a  day  has  elapsed  that  thought  has 
grown  and  widened  by  the  ceaseless  evolution  of 
life;  and  lo!  yesterday's  law  already  fallen  out  with 
today's  thought.  Yet  if  the  high  givers  of  that  law 
themselves  set  the  example  of  breaking  it  before  it  is 


12  The  Perfect  Wagnerite       Scene  I 

a  week  old,  they  destroy  all  its  authority  with  their 
subjects,  and  so  break  the  weapon  they  have  forged  to 
rule  them  for  their  own  good.  They  must  therefore 
maintain  at  all  costs  the  sanctity  of  the  law,  even  when 
it  has  ceased  to  represent  their  thought;  so  that  at 
last  they  get  entangled  in  a  network  of  ordinances 
which  they  no  longer  believe  in,  and  yet  have  made 
so  sacred  by  custom  and  so  terrible  by  punishment, 
that  they  cannot  themselves  escape  from  them.  Thus 
Godhead's  resort  to  law  finally  costs  it  half  its  integ- 
rity— as  if  a  spiritual  king,  to  gain  temporal  power, 
had  plucked  out  one  of  his  eyes — and  it  finally 
begins  secretly  to  long  for  the  advent  of  some  power 
higher  than  itself  which  will  destroy  its  artificial 
empire  of  law,  and  establish  a  true  republic  of  free 
thought. 

This  is  by  no  means  the  only  difficulty  in  the  do- 
minion of  Law.  The  brute  force  for  its  execution 
must  be  purchased;  and  the  mass  of  its  subjects  must 
be  persuaded  to  respect  the  authority  which  employs 
this  force.  But  how  is  such  respect  to  be  implanted 
in  them  if  they  are  unable  to  comprehend  the  thought 
of  the  lawgiver  ?  Clearly,  only  by  associating  the 
legislative  power  with  such  displays  of  splendor 
and  majesty  as  will  impress  their  senses  and  awe 
their  imaginations.  The  god  turned  lawgiver,  in 
short,  must  be  crowned  Pontiff  and  King.  Since 
he  cannot  be  known  to  the  common  folk  as  their 
superior  in  wisdom,  he  must  be  known  to  them  as 
their  superior  in  riches,  as  the  dweller  in  castles,  the 
wearer  of  gold  and  purple,  the  eater  of  mighty  feasts, 


Scene  ii  The  Rhine  Gold  13 

the  commander  of  armies,  and  the  wielder  of  powers 
of  life  and  death,  of  salvation  and  damnation  after 
death.  Something  may  be  done  in  this  way  without 
corruption  whilst  the  golden  age  still  endures.  Your 
gods  may  not  prevail  with  the  dwarfs;  but  they  may 
go  to  these  honest  giants  who  will  give  a  day's  work 
for  a  day's  pay,  and  induce  them  to  build  for  God- 
head a  mighty  fortress,  complete  with  hall  and  chapel, 
tower  and  bell,  for  the  sake  of  the  homesteads  that  will 
grow  up  in  security  round  that  church-castle.  This 
only,  however,  whilst  the  golden  age  lasts.  The 
moment  the  Plutonic  power  is  let  loose,  and  the  love- 
less Alberic  comes  into  the  field  with  his  corrupting 
millions,  the  gods  are  face  to  face  with  destruction; 
since  Alberic,  able  with  invisible  hunger-whip  to 
force  the  labor  of  the  dwarfs  and  to  buy  the  services 
of  the  giants,  can  outshine  all  the  temporal  shows 
and  splendors  of  the  golden  age,  and  make  him- 
self master  of  the  world,  unless  the  gods,  with 
their  bigger  brains,  can  capture  his  gold.  This, 
the  dilemma  of  the  Church  today,  is  the  situation 
created  by  the  exploit  of  Alberic  in  the  depths  of 
the  Rhine. 

Second  Scene 

From  the  bed  of  the  river  we  rise  into  cloudy  re- 
gions, and  finally  come  out  into  the  clear  in  a  meadow, 
where  Wotan,  the  god  of  gods,  and  his  consort  Fricka 
lie  sleeping.  Wotan,  you  will  observe,  has  lost  one 
eye;  and  you  will  presently  learn  that  he  plucked  it 


14  The  Perfect  Wagnerite     Scene  n 

out  voluntarily  as  the  price  to  be  paid  for  his  alliance 
with  Fricka,  who  in  return  has  brought  to  him  as  her 
dowry  all  the  powers  of  Law.  The  meadow  is  on  the 
brink  of  a  ravine,  beyond  which,  towering  on  distant 
heights,  stands  Godhome,  a  mighty  castle,  newly 
built  as  a  house  of  state  for  the  one-eyed  god  and  his 
all-ruling  wife.  Wotan  has  not  yet  seen  this  castle 
except  in  his  dreams:  two  giants  have  just  built  it 
for  him  whilst  he  slept;  and  the  reality  is  before  him 
for  the  first  time  when  Fricka  wakes  him.  In  that 
majestic  burg  he  is  to  rule  with  her  and  through  her 
over  the  humble  giants,  who  have  eyes  to  gape  at  the 
glorious  castles  their  own  hands  have  built  from  his 
design,  but  no  brains  to  design  castles  for  themselves, 
or  to  comprehend  divinity.  As  a  god,  he  is  to  be 
great,  secure,  and  mighty;  but  he  is  also  to  be 
passionless,  affectionless,  wholly  impartial;  for  God- 
head, if  it  is  to  live  with  Law,  must  have  no  weakness- 
es, no  respect  for  persons.  All  such  sweet  littlenesses 
must  be  left  to  the  humble  stupid  giants  to  make  their 
toil  sweet  to  them;  and  the  god  must,  after  all,  pay 
for  Olympian  power  the  same  price  the  dwarf  has 
paid  for  Plutonic  power. 

Wotan  has  forgotten  this  in  his  dreams  of  great- 
ness. Not  so  Fricka.  What  she  is  thinking  of  is  this 
price  that  Wotan  has  consented  to  pay,  in  token 
whereof  he  has  promised  this  day  to  hand  over  to  the 
giants  Fricka's  sister,  the  goddess  Freia,  with  her 
golden  love-apples.  When  Fricka  reproaches  Wotan 
with  having  selfishly  forgotten  this,  she  finds  that  he, 
like  herself,  is  not  prepared  to  go  through  with  his 


scene  ii  The  Rhine  Gold  15 

bargain,  and  that  he  is  trusting  to  another  great 
world-force,  the  Lie  (a  European  Power,  as  Lassalle 
said),  to  help  him  to  trick  the  giants  out  of  their  re- 
ward. But  this  force  does  not  dwell  in  Wotan  him- 
self, but  in  another,  a  god  over  whom  he  has  triumph- 
ed, one  Loki,  the  god  of  Intellect,  Argument,  Imagina- 
tion, Illusion,  and  Reason.  Loki  has  promised  to  de- 
liver him  from  his  contract,  and  to  cheat  the  giants 
for  him;  but  he  has  not  arrived  to  keep  his  word: 
indeed,  as  Fricka  bitterly  points  out,  why  should  not 
the  Lie  fail  Wotan,  since  such  failure  is  the  very 
essence  of  him  ? 

The  giants  come  soon  enough;  and  Freia  flies  to 
Wotan  for  protection  against  them.  Their  purposes 
are  quite  honest;  and  they  have  no  doubt  of  the  god's 
faith.  There  stands  their  part  of  the  contract  ful- 
filled, stone  on  stone,  port  and  pinnacle  all  faithfully 
finished  from  Wotan's  design  by  their  mighty  labor. 
They  have  come  undoubtingly  for  their  agreed  wage. 
Then  there  happens  what  is  to  them  an  incredible, 
inconceivable  thing.  The  god  begins  to  shuffle. 
There  are  no  moments  in  life  more  tragic  than  those 
in  which  the  humble  common  man,  the  manual 
worker,  leaving  with  implicit  trust  all  high  affairs  to 
his  betters,  and  reverencing  them  wholly  as  worthy 
of  that  trust,  even  to  the  extent  of  accepting  as  his 
rightful  function  the  saving  of  them  from  all  rough- 
ening and  coarsening  drudgeries,  first  discovers  that 
they  are  corrupt,  greedy,  unjust  and  treacherous. 
The  shock  drives  a  ray  of  prophetic  light  into  one 
giant's  mind,  and  gives  him  a  momentary  eloquence. 


16  The  Perfect  Wagnerite      Scene  n 

In  that  moment  he  rises  above  his  stupid  gianthood, 
and  earnestly  warns  the  Son  of  Light  that  all  his 
power  and  eminence  of  priesthood,  godhood,  and 
kingship  must  stand  or  fall  with  the  unbearable  cold 
greatness  of  the  incorruptible  law-giver.  But  Wotan, 
whose  assumed  character  of  law-giver  is  altogether 
false  to  his  real  passionate  nature,  despises  the 
rebuke;  and  the  giant's  ray  of  insight  is  lost  in  the 
murk  of  his  virtuous  indignation. 

In  the  midst  of  the  wrangle,  Loki  comes  at  last, 
excusing  himself  for  being  late  on  the  ground  that 
he  has  been  detained  by  a  matter  of  importance  which 
he  has  promised  to  lay  before  Wotan.  When  pressed 
to  give  his  mind  to  the  business  immediately  in  hand, 
and  to  extricate  Wotan  from  his  dilemma,  he  has 
nothing  to  say  except  that  the  giants  are  evidently 
altogether  in  the  right.  The  castle  has  been  duly 
built:  he  has  tried  every  stone  of  it,  and  found  the 
work  firstrate:  there  is  nothing  to  be  done  but  pay 
the  price  agreed  upon  by  handing  over  Freia  to  the 
giants.  The  gods  are  furious;  and  Wotan  passionate- 
ly declares  that  he  only  consented  to  the  bargain  on 
Loki's  promise  to  find  a  way  for  him  out  of  it.  But 
Loki  says  no:  he  has  promised  to  find  a  way  out 
if  any  such  way  exist,  but  not  to  make  a  way  if 
there  is  no  way.  He  has  wandered  over  the  whole 
earth  in  search  of  some  treasure  great  enough  to  buy 
Freia  back  from  the  giants;  but  in  all  the  world  he 
has  found  nothing  for  which  Man  will  give  up  Woman. 
And  this,  by  the  way,  reminds  him  of  the  matter  he 
had  promised  to  lay  before  Wotan.  The  Rhine 


Scene  ii  The  Rhine  Gold  17 

maidens  have  complained  to  him  of  Alberic's  theft  of 
their  gold;  and  he  mentions  it  as  a  curious  exception 
to  his  universal  law  of  the  unpurchasable  preciousness 
of  love,  that  this  gold-robber  has  forsworn  love  for 
the  sake  of  the  fabulous  riches  of  the  Plutonic  empire 
and  the  mastery  of  the  world  through  its  power. 

No  sooner  is  the  tale  told  than  the  giants  stoop 
lower  than  the  dwarf.  Alberic  forswore  love  only 
when  it  was  denied  to  him  and  made  the  instrument 
for  cruelly  murdering  his  self-respect.  But  the  giants, 
with  love  within  their  reach,  with  Freia  and  her 
golden  apples  in  their  hands,  offer  to  give  her  up  for 
the  treasure  of  Alberic.  Observe,  it  is  the  treasure 
alone  that  they  desire.  They  have  no  fierce  dreams 
of  dominion  over  their  superiors,  or  of  moulding 
the  world  to  any  conceptions  of  their  own.  They 
are  neither  clever  nor  ambitious:  they  simply  covet 
money.  Alberic's  gold :  that  is  their  demand,  or  else 
Freia,  as  agreed  upon,  whom  they  now  carry  off  as 
hostage,  leaving  Wotan  to  consider  their  ultimatum. 

Freia  gone,  the  gods  begin  to  wither  and  age:  her 
golden  apples,  which  they  so  lightly  bargained  away, 
they  now  find  to  be  a  matter  of  life  and  death  to 
them;  for  not  even  the  gods  can  live  on  Law  and 
Godhead  alone,  be  their  castles  ever  so  splendid. 
Loki  alone  is  unaffected :  the  Lie,  with  all  its  cunning 
wonders,  its  glistenings  and  shiftings  and  mirages,  is 
a  mere  appearance:  it  has  no  body  and  needs  no  food. 
What  is  Wotan  to  do  ?  Loki  sees  the  answer  clearly 
enough:  he  must  bluntly  rob  Alberic.  There  is 
nothing  to  prevent  him  except  moral  scruple;  for 


18  The  Perfect  Wagnerite     Scene  ill 

Alberic,  after  all,  is  a  poor,  dim,  dwarfed,  credulous 
creature  whom  a  god  can  outsee  and  a  lie  can  outwit. 
Down,  then,  Wotan  and  Loki  plunge  into  the  mine 
where  Alberic's  slaves  are  piling  up  wealth  for  him 
under  the  invisible  whip. 

Third  Scene 

This  gloomy  place  need  not  be  a  mine:  it  might 
just  as  well  be  a  match-factory,  with  yellow  phos- 
phorus, phossy  jaw,  a  large  dividend,  and  plenty  of 
clergymen  shareholders.  Or  it  might  be  a  whitelead 
factory,  or  a  chemical  works,  or  a  pottery,  or  a  rail- 
way shunting  yard,  or  a  tailoring  shop,  or  a  little  gin- 
sodden  laundry,  or  a  bakehouse,  or  a  big  shop,  or  any 
other  of  the  places  where  human  life  and  welfare  are 
daily  sacrificed  in  order  that  some  greedy  foolish 
creature  may  be  able  to  hymn  exultantly  to  his 
Plutonic  idol: 

Thou  mak'st  me  eat  whilst  others  starve, 
And  sing  while  others  do  lament: 
Such  unto  me  Thy  blessings  are, 
As  if  I  were  Thine  only  care. 

In  the  mine,  which  resounds  with  the  clinking 
anvils  of  the  dwarfs  toiling  miserably  to  heap  up 
treasure  for  their  master,  Alberic  has  set  his  brother 
Mime — more  familiarly,  Mimmy — to  make  him  a 
helmet.  Mimmy  dimly  sees  that  there  is  some  magic 
in  this  helmet,  and  tries  to  keep  it;  but  Alberic  wrests 
it  from  him,  and  shows  him,  to  his  cost,  that  it  is  the 
veil  of  the  invisible  whip,  and  that  he  who  wears  it 


Scene  in          The  Rhine  Gold  19 

can  appear  in  what  shape  he  will,  or  disappear  from 
view  altogether.  This  helmet  is  a  very  common  article 
in  our  streets,  where  it  generally  takes  the  form  of  a 
tall  hat.  It  makes  a  man  invisible  as  a  shareholder, 
and  changes  him  into  various  shapes,  such  as  a  pious 
Christian,  a  subscriber  to  hospitals,  a  benefactor  of  the 
poor,  a  model  husband  and  father,  a  shrewd,  practical 
independent  Englishman,  and  what  not,  when  he  is 
really  a  pitiful  parasite  on  the  commonwealth,  con- 
suming a  great  deal,  and  producing  nothing,  feeling 
nothing,  knowing  nothing,  believing  nothing,  and 
doing  nothing  except  what  all  the  rest  do,  and  that 
only  because  he  is  afraid  not  to  do  it,  or  at  least  pre- 
tend to  do  it. 

When  Wotan  and  Loki  arrive,  Loki  claims  Alberic 
as  an  old  acquaintance.  But  the  dwarf  has  no  faith  in 
these  civil  strangers :  Greed  instinctively  mistrusts  In- 
tellect, even  in  the  garb  of  Poetry  and  the  company 
of  Godhead,  whilst  envying  the  brilliancy  of  the  one 
and  the  dignity  of  the  other.  Alberic  breaks  out  at 
them  with  a  terrible  boast  of  the  power  now  within 
his  grasp.  He  paints  for  them  the  world  as  it  will  be 
when  his  dominion  over  it  is  complete,  when  the  soft 
airs  and  green  mosses  of  its  valleys  shall  be  changed 
into  smoke,  slag,  and  filth;  when  slavery,  disease,  and 
squalor,  soothed  by  drunkenness  and  mastered  by  the 
policeman's  baton,  shall  become  the  foundation  of 
society;  and  when  nothing  shall  escape  ruin  except 
such  pretty  places  and  pretty  women  as  he  may  like  to 
buy  for  the  slaking  of  his  own  lusts.  In  that  kingdom 
of  evil  he  sees  that  there  will  be  no  power  but  his  own. 


20  The  Perfect  Wagnerite    Scene  in 

These  gods,  with  their  moralities  and  legalities  and 
intellectual  subtlety,  will  go  under  and  be  starved  out 
of  existence.  He  bids  Wotan  and  Loki  beware  of  it; 
and  his  "Hab'  Acht!"  is  hoarse,  horrible,  and  sinis- 
ter. Wotan  is  revolted  to  the  very  depths  of  his  being : 
he  cannot  stifle  the  execration  that  bursts  from  him. 
But  Loki  is  unaffected:  he  has  no  moral  passion:  in- 
dignation is  as  absurd  to  him  as  enthusiasm.  He  finds 
it  exquisitely  amusing — having  a  touch  of  the  comic 
spirit  in  him — that  the  dwarf,  in  stirring  up  the  moral 
fervor  of  Wotan,  has  removed  his  last  moral  scruple 
about  becoming  a  thief.  Wotan  will  now  rob  the 
dwarf  without  remorse;  for  is  it  not  positively  his  high- 
est duty  to  take  this  power  out  of  such  evil  hands  and 
use  it  himself  in  the  interests  of  Godhead  ?  On  the 
loftiest  moral  grounds,  he  lets  Loki  do  his  worst. 
A  little  cunningly  disguised  flattery  makes  short 
work  of  Alberic.  Loki  pretends  to  be  afraid  of  him; 
and  he  swallows  that  bait  unhesitatingly.  But  how, 
enquires  Loki,  is  he  to  guard  against  the  hatred  of  his 
million  slaves  ?  Will  they  not  steal  from  him,  whilst  he 
sleeps,  the  magic  ring,  the  symbol  of  his  power,  which 
he  has  forged  from  the  gold  of  the  Rhine  ?  "  You 
think  yourself  very  clever,"  sneers  Alberic,  and  then 
begins  to  boast  of  the  enchantments  of  the  magic 
helmet.  Loki  refuses  to  believe  in  such  marvels  with- 
out witnessing  them.  Alberic,  only  too  glad  to  show 
off  his  powers,  puts  on  the  helmet  and  transforms 
himself  into  a  monstrous  serpent.  Loki  gratifies  him 
by  pretending  to  be  frightened  out  of  his  wits,  but 
ventures  to  remark  that  it  would  be  better  still  if  the 


Scene  iv          The  Rhine  Gold  21 

helmet  could  transform  its  owner  into  some  tiny  crea- 
ture that  could  hide  and  spy  in  the  smallest  cranny. 
Alberic  promptly  transforms  himself  into  a  toad.  In 
an  instant  Wotan's  foot  is  on  him;  Loki  tears  away 
the  helmet;  they  pinion  him,  and  drag  him  away  a 
prisoner  up  through  the  earth  to  the  meadow  by  the 
castle. 

Fourth   Scene 

There,  to  pay  for  his  freedom,  he  has  to  summon 
his  slaves  from  the  depths  to  place  all  the  treasure  they 
have  heaped  up  for  him  at  the  feet  of  Wotan.  Then 
he  demands  his  liberty;  but  Wotan  must  have  the 
ring  as  well.  And  here  the  dwarf,  like  the  giant 
before  him,  feels  the  very  foundations  of  the  world 
shake  beneath  him  at  the  discovery  of  his  own  base 
cupidity  in  a  higher  power.  That  evil  should,  in  its 
loveless  desperation,  create  malign  powers  which  God- 
head could  not  create,  seems  but  natural  justice  to 
him.  But  that  Godhead  should  steal  those  malign 
powers  from  evil,  and  wield  them  itself,  is  a  monstrous 
perversion;  and  his  appeal  to  Wotan  to  forego  it  is 
almost  terrible  in  its  conviction  of  wrong.  It  is  of  no 
avail.  Wotan  falls  back  again  on  virtuous  indigna- 
tion. He  reminds  Alberic  that  he  stole  the  gold  from 
the  Rhine  maidens,  and  takes  the  attitude  of  the  just 
judge  compelling  a  restitution  of  stolen  goods.  Al- 
beric, knowing  perfectly  well  that  the  judge  is  taking 
the  goods  to  put  them  in  his  own  pocket,  has  the 
ring  torn  from  his  finger,  and  is  once  more  as  poor  as 


22  The  Perfect  Wagnerite     Scene  iv 

he  was  when  he  came  slipping  and  stumbling  among 
the  slimy  rocks  in  the  bed  of  the  Rhine. 

This  is  the  way  of  the  world.  In  older  times,  when 
the  Christian  laborer  was  drained  dry  by  the  knightly 
spendthrift,  and  the  spendthrift  was  drained  by  the 
Jewish  usurer,  Church  and  State,  religion  and  law, 
seized  on  the  Jew  and  drained  him  as  a  Christian  duty. 
When  the  forces  of  lovelessness  and  greed  had  built 
up  our  own  sordid  capitalist  systems,  driven  by  in- 
visible proprietorship,  robbing  the  poor,  defacing  the 
earth,  and  forcing  themselves  as  a  universal  curse  even 
on  the  generous  and  humane,  then  religion  and  law 
and  intellect,  which  would  never  themselves  have  dis- 
covered such  systems,  their  natural  bent  being  towards 
welfare,  economy,  and  life  instead  of  towards  corrup- 
tion, waste,  and  death,  nevertheless  did  not  scruple 
to  seize  by  fraud  and  force  these  powers  of  evil  on 
pretence  of  using  them  for  good.  And  it  inevitably 
happens  that  when  the  Church,  the  Law,  and  all  the 
Talents  have  made  common  cause  to  rob  the  people, 
the  Church  is  far  more  vitally  harmed  by  that  un- 
faithfulness to  itself  than  its  more  mechanical  confed- 
erates; so  that  finally  they  turn  on  their  discredited 
ally  and  rob  the  Church,  with  the  cheerful  co-oper- 
ation of  Loki,  as  in  France  and  Italy  for  instance. 

The  twin  giants  come  back  with  their  hostage, 
in  whose  presence  Godhead  blooms  again.  The  gold 
is  ready  for  them;  but  now  that  the  moment  has  come 
for  parting  with  Freia  the  gold  does  not  seem  so  tempt- 
ing; and  they  are  sorely  loth  to  let  her  go.  Not  unless 
there  is  gold  enough  to  utterly  hide  her  from  them — 


Scene  iv          The  Rhine  Gold  23 

not  until  the  heap  has  grown  so  that  they  can  see 
nothing  but  gold — until  money  has  come  between 
them  and  every  human  feeling,  will  they  part  with  her. 
There  is  not  gold  enough  to  accomplish  this:  however 
cunningly  Loki  spreads  it,  the  glint  of  Freia's  hair  is 
still  visible  to  Giant  Fafnir,  and  the  magic  helmet 
must  go  on  the  heap  to  shut  it  out.  Even  then  Fafnir's 
brother,  Fasolt,  can  catch  a  beam  from  her  eye  through 
a  chink,  and  is  rendered  incapable  thereby  of  forswear- 
ing her.  There  is  nothing  to  stop  that  chink  but  the 
ring;  and  Wotan  is  as  greedily  bent  on  keeping  that 
as  Alberic  himself  was;  nor  can  the  other  gods  per- 
suade him  that  Freia  is  worth  it,  since  for  the  highest 
god,  love  is  not  the  highest  good,  but  only  the  uni- 
versal delight  that  bribes  all  living  things  to  travail 
with  renewed  life.  Life  itself,  with  its  accomplished 
marvels  and  its  infinite  potentialities,  is  the  only  force 
that  Godhead  can  worship.  Wotan  does  not  yield 
until  he  is  reached  by  the  voice  of  the  fruitful  earth, 
that  before  he  or  the  dwarfs  or  the  giants  or  the  Law 
or  the  Lie  or  any  of  these  things  were,  had  the  seed  of 
them  all  in  her  bosom,  and  the  seed  perhaps  of  some- 
thing higher  even  than  himself,  that  shall  one  day 
supersede  him  and  cut  the  tangles  and  alliances  and 
compromises  that  already  have  cost  him  one  of  his 
eyes.  When  Erda,  the  First  Mother  of  life,  rises  from 
her  sleeping-place  in  the  heart  of  the  earth,  and  warns 
him  to  yield  the  ring,  he  obeys  her;  the  ring  is  added 
to  the  heap  of  gold;  and  all  sense  of  Freia  is  cut  off 
from  the  giants. 

But  now  what  Law  is  left  to  these  two  poor  stupid 


24  The  Perfect  Wagnerite     Scene  iv 

laborers  whereby  one  shall  yield  to  the  other  any  of 
the  treasure  for  which  they  have  each  paid  the  whole 
price  in  surrendering  Freia  ?  They  look  by  mere  habit 
to  the  god  to  judge  for  them;  but  he,  with  his  heart 
stirring  towards  higher  forces  than  himself,  turns  with 
disgust  from  these  lower  forces.  They  settle  it  as  two 
wolves  might;  and  Fafnir  batters  his  brother  dead 
with  his  staff.  It  is  a  horrible  thing  to  see  and  hear, 
to  anyone  who  knows  how  much  blood  has  been  shed 
in  the  world  in  just  that  way  by  its  brutalized  toilers, 
honest  fellows  enough  until  their  betters  betrayed 
them.  Fafnir  goes  off  with  his  booty.  It  is  quite 
useless  to  him.  He  has  neither  the  cunning  nor  the 
ambition  to  establish  the  Plutonic  empire  with  it. 
Merely  to  prevent  others  from  getting  it  is  the  only 
purpose  it  brings  him.  He  piles  it  in  a  cave;  trans- 
forms himself  into  a  dragon  by  the  helmet;  and 
devotes  his  life  to  guarding  it,  as  much  a  slave  to  it  as  a 
jailor  is  to  his  prisoner.  He  had  much  better  have 
thrown  it  all  back  into  the  Rhine  and  transformed 
himself  into  the  shortest-lived  animal  that  enjoys 
at  least  a  brief  run  in  the  sunshine.  His  case,  how- 
ever, is  far  too  common  to  be  surprising.  The  world 
is  overstocked  with  persons  who  sacrifice  all  their 
affections,  and  madly  trample  and  batter  down  their 
fellows  to  obtain  riches  of  which,  when  they  get  them, 
they  are  unable  to  make  the  smallest  use,  and  to 
which  they  become  the  most  miserable  slaves. 

The  gods  soon  forget  Fafnir  in  their  rejoicing  over 
Freia.  Donner,  the  Thunder  god,  springs  to  a  rocky 
summit  and  calls  the  clouds  as  a  shepherd  calls  his 


Scene  iv          The  Rhine  Gold  25 

flocks.  They  come  at  his  summons;  and  he  and  the 
castle  are  hidden  by  their  black  legions.  Froh,  the 
Rainbow  god,  hastens  to  his  side.  At  the  stroke  of 
Donner's  hammer  the  black  murk  is  riven  in  all 
directions  by  darting  ribbons  of  lightning;  and  as  the 
air  clears,  the  castle  is  seen  in  its  fullest  splendor, 
accessible  now  by  the  rainbow  bridge  which  Froh  has 
cast  across  the  ravine.  In  the  glory  of  this  moment 
Wotan  has  a  great  thought.  With  all  his  aspirations 
to  establish  a  reign  of  noble  thought,  of  righteous- 
ness, order,  and  justice,  he  has  found  that  day  that 
there  is  no  race  yet  in  the  world  that  quite  spontane- 
ously, naturally,  and  unconsciously  realizes  his  ideal. 
He  himself  has  found  how  far  short  Godhead  falls  of 
the  thing  it  conceives.  He,  the  greatest  of  gods,  has 
been  unable  to  control  his  fate:  he  has  been  forced 
against  his  will  to  choose  between  evils,  to  make 
disgraceful  bargains,  to  break  them  still  more  dis- 
gracefully, and  even  then  to  see  the  price  of  his  disgrace 
slip  through  his  fingers.  His  consort  has  cost  him 
half  his  vision;  his  castle  has  cost  him  his  affections; 
and  the  attempt  to  retain  both  has  cost  him  his  honor. 
On  every  side  he  is  shackled  and  bound,  dependent 
on  the  laws  of  Fricka  and  on  the  lies  of  Loki,  forced 
to  traffic  with  dwarfs  for  handicraft  and  with  giants 
for  strength,  and  to  pay  them  both  in  false  coin. 
After  all,  a  god  is  a  pitiful  thing.  But  the  fertility 
of  the  First  Mother  is  not  yet  exhausted.  The  life 
that  came  from  her  has  ever  climbed  up  to  a  higher 
and  higher  organization.  From  toad  and  serpent  to 
dwarf,  from  bear  and  elephant  to  giant,  from  dwarf 


26  The  Perfect  Wagnerite     Scene  iv 

and  giant  to  a  god  with  thoughts,  with  comprehension 
of  the  world,  with  ideals.  Why  should  it  stop  there  ? 
Why  should  it  not  rise  from  the  god  to  the  Hero  ?  to 
the  creature  in  whom  the  god's  unavailing  thought 
shall  have  become  effective  will  and  life,  who  shall 
make  his  way  straight  to  truth  and  reality  over  the 
laws  of  Fricka  and  the  lies  of  Loki  with  a  strength 
that  overcomes  giants  and  a  cunning  that  outwits 
dwarfs?  Yes:  Erda,  the  First  Mother,  must  travail 
again,  and  breed  him  a  race  of  heroes  to  deliver  the 
world  and  himself  from  his  limited  powers  and  dis- 
graceful bargains.  This  is  the  vision  that  flashes  on 
him  as  he  turns  to  the  rainbow  bridge  and  calls  his 
wife  to  come  and  dwell  with  him  in  Valhalla,  the 
home  of  the  gods. 

They  are  all  overcome  with  Valhalla's  glory  ex- 
cept Loki.  He  is  behind  the  scenes  of  this  joint 
reign  of  the  Divine  and  the  Legal.  He  despises  these 
gods  with  their  ideals  and  their  golden  apples.  "I 
am  ashamed,"  he  says,  "to  have  dealings  with  these 
futile  creatures."  And  so  he  follows  them  to  the 
rainbow  bridge.  But  as  they  set  foot  on  it,  from  the 
river  below  rises  the  wailing  of  the  Rhine  maidens 
for  their  lost  gold.  "You  down  there  in  the  water," 
cries  Loki  with  brutal  irony:  "you  used  to  bask  in  the 
glitter  of  your  gold:  henceforth  you  shall  bask  in  the 
splendor  of  the  gods."  And  they  reply  that  the  truth 
is  in  the  depths  and  the  darkness,  and  that  what 
blazes  on  high  there  is  falsehood.  And  with  that  the 
gods  pass  into  their  glorious  stronghold. 


WAGNER  AS  REVOLUTIONIST 

BEFORE  leaving  this  explanation  of  The  Rhine  Gold, 
I  must  have  a  word  or  two  about  it  with  the  reader. 
It  is  the  least  popular  of  the  sections  of  The  Ring. 
The  reason  is  that  its  dramatic  moments  lie  quite 
outside  the  consciousness  of  people  whose  joys  and 
sorrows  are  all  domestic  and  personal,  and  whose 
religions  and  political  ideas  are  purely  conventional 
and  superstitious.  To  them  it  is  a  struggle  between 
half  a  dozen  fairytale  personages  for  a  ring,  involving 
hours  of  scolding  and  cheating,  and  one  long  scene  in 
a  dark  gruesome  mine,  with  gloomy,  ugly  music, 
and  not  a  glimpse  of  a  handsome  young  man  or 
pretty  woman.  Only  those  of  wider  consciousness 
can  follow  it  breathlessly,  seeing  in  it  the  whole 
tragedy  of  human  history  and  the  whole  horror  of  the 
dilemmas  from  which  the  world  is  shrinking  today. 
At  Bayreuth  I  have  seen  a  party  of  English  tourists, 
after  enduring  agonies  of  boredom  from  Alberic,  rise 
in  the  middle  of  the  third  scene,  and  almost  force 
their  way  out  of  the  dark  theatre  into  the  sunlit  pine- 
wood  without.  And  I  have  seen  people  who  were 
deeply  affected  by  the  scene  driven  almost  beside 


28  The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

themselves  by  this  disturbance.  But  it  was  a  very 
natural  thing  for  the  unfortunate  tourists  to  do,  since 
in  this  Rhine  Gold  prologue  there  is  no  interval 
between  the  acts  for  escape.  Roughly  speaking, 
people  who  have  no  general  ideas,  no  touch  of  the 
concern  of  the  philosopher  and  statesman  for  the  race, 
cannot  enjoy  The  Rhine  Gold  as  a  drama.  They  may 
find  compensations  in  some  exceedingly  pretty  music, 
at  times  even  grand  and  glorious,  which  will  enable 
them  to  escape  occasionally  from  the  struggle  between 
Alberic  and  Wotan;  but  if  their  capacity  for  music 
should  be  as  limited  as  their  comprehension  of  the 
world,  they  had  better  stay  away. 

And  now,  attentive  Reader,  we  have  reached  the 
point  at  which  some  foolish  person  is  sure  to  interrupt 
us  by  declaring  that  The  Rhine  Gold  is  what  they  call 
"a  work  of  art"  pure  and  simple,  and  that  Wagner 
never  dreamt  of  shareholders,  tall  hats,  whitelead 
factories,  and  industrial  and  political  questions  looked 
at  from  the  socialistic  and  humanitarian  points  of  view. 
We  need  not  discuss  these  impertinences:  it  is  easier 
to  silence  them  with  the  facts  of  Wagner's  life.  In 
1843  ne  obtained  the  position  of  conductor  of  the 
Opera  at  Dresden  at  a  salary  of  £225  a  year,  with  a 
pension.  This  was  a  first-rate  permanent  appoint- 
ment in  the  service  of  the  Saxon  State,  carrying  an 
assured  professional  position  and  livelihood  with  it. 
In  1848,  the  year  of  revolutions,  the  discontented 
middle  class,  unable  to  rouse  the  Church-and-State 
governments  of  the  day  from  their  bondage  to  custom, 
caste,  and  law  by  appeals  to  morality  or  constitu- 


Wagner  as  Revolutionist         29 

tional  agitation  for  Liberal  reforms,  made  common 
cause  with  the  starving  wage-working  class,  and  re- 
sorted to  armed  rebellion,  which  reached  Dresden  in 
1849.  Had  Wagner  been  the  mere  musical  epicure 
and  political  mugwump  that  the  term  "artist"  seems 
to  suggest  to  so  many  critics  and  amateurs — that  is,  a 
creature  in  their  own  lazy  likeness —  he  need  have 
taken  no  more  part  in  the  political  struggles  of  his 
day  than  Bishop  took  in  the  English  Reform  agitation 
of  1832,  or  Sterndale  Bennett  in  the  Chartist  or  Free 
Trade  movements.  What  he  did  do  was  first  to  make 
a  desperate  appeal  to  the  King  to  cast  off  his  bonds 
and  answer  the  .  need  of  the  time  by  taking  true 
Kingship  on  himself  and  leading  his  people  to  the 
redress  of  their  intolerable  wrongs  (fancy  the  poor 
monarch's  feelings!),  and  then,  when  the  crash 
came,  to  take  his  side  with  the  right  and  the  poor 
against  the  rich  and  the  wrong.  When  the  insur- 
rection was  defeated,  three  leaders  of  it  were  especi- 
ally marked  down  for  vengeance:  August  Roeckel, 
an  old  friend  of  Wagner's  to  whom  he  wrote  a  well- 
known  series  of  letters;  Michael  Bakoonin,  afterwards 
a  famous  apostle  of  revolutionary  Anarchism;  and 
Wagner  himself.  Wagner  escaped  to  Switzerland: 
Roeckel  and  Bakoonin  suffered  long  terms  of  impri- 
sonment. Wagner  was  of  course  utterly  ruined, 
pecuniarily  and  socially  (to  his  own  intense  relief  and 
satisfaction);  and  his  exile  lasted  twelve  years.  His 
first  idea  was  to  get  his  Tannhauser  produced  in 
Paris.  With  the  notion  of  explaining  himself  to  the 
Parisians  he  wrote  a  pamphlet  entitled  Art  and 


30  The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

Revolution,  a  glance  through  which  will  show  how 
thoroughly  the  socialistic  side  of  the  revolution  had 
his  sympathy,  and  how  completely  he  had  got  free 
from  the  influence  of  the  established  Churches  of  his 
day.  For  three  years  he  kept  pouring  forth  pam- 
phlets— some  of  them  elaborate  treatises  in  size  and 
intellectual  rank,  but  still  essentially  the  pamphlets 
and  manifestoes  of  a  born  agitator — on  social  evolu- 
tion, religion,  life,  art  and  the  influence  of  riches.  In 
1853  the  poem  of  The  Ring  was  privately  printed; 
and  in  1854,  five  years  after  the  Dresden  insurrection, 
The  Rhine  Gold  score  was  completed  to  the  last 
drum  tap. 

These  facts  are  on  official  record  in  Germany, 
where  the  proclamation  summing  up  Wagner  as  "a 
politically  dangerous  person"  may  be  consulted  to 
this  day.  The  pamphlets  are  now  accessible  to 
English  readers  in  the  translation  of  Mr.  Ashton 
Ellis.  This  being  so,  any  person  who,  having  per- 
haps heard  that  I  am  a  Socialist,  attempts  to  persuade 
you  that  my  interpretation  of  The  Rhine  Gold  is 
only  "my  socialism"  read  into  the  works  of  a  dil- 
ettantist  who  borrowed  an  idle  tale  from  an  old  saga 
to  make  an  opera  book  with,  may  safely  be  dismissed 
from  your  consideration  as  an  ignoramus. 

If  you  are  now  satisfied  that  The  Rhine  Gold  is  an 
allegory,  do  not  forget  that  an  allegory  is  never  quite 
consistent  except  when  it  is  written  by  someone  with- 
out dramatic  faculty,  in  which  case  it  is  unreadable. 
There  is  only  one  way  of  dramatizing  an  idea;  and 
that  is  by  putting  on  the  stage  a  human  being  possess- 


Wagner  as  Revolutionist          31 

ed  by  that  idea,  yet  none  the  less  a  human  being  with 
all  the  human  impulses  which  make  him  akin  and 
therefore  interesting  to  us.  Bunyan,  in  his  Pilgrim's 
Progress,  does  not,  like  his  unread  imitators,  attempt 
to  personify  Christianity  and  Valour:  he  dramatizes 
for  you  the  life  of  the  Christian  and  the  Valiant  Man. 
Just  so,  though  I  have  shown  that  Wotan  is  Godhead 
and  Kingship,  and  Loki  Logic  and  Imagination  with- 
out living  Will  (Brain  without  Heart,  to  put  it 
vulgarly);  yet  in  the  drama  Wotan  is  a  religiously 
moral  man,  and  Loki  a  witty,  ingenious,  imaginative 
and  cynical  one.  As  to  Fricka,  who  stands  for  State 
Law,  she  does  not  assume  her  allegorical  character 
in  The  Rhine  Gold  at  all,  but  is  simply  Wotan's 
wife  and  Freia's  sister:  nay,  she  contradicts  her  al- 
legorical self  by  conniving  at  all  Wotan's  rogueries. 
That,  of  course,  is  just  what  State  Law  would  do; 
but  we  must  not  save  the  credit  of  the  allegory  by 
a  quip.  Not  until  she  reappears  in  the  next  play 
(The  Valkyries)  does  her  function  in  the  allegorical 
scheme  become  plain. 

One  preconception  will  bewilder  the  spectator 
hopelessly  unless  he  has  been  warned  against  it  or  is 
naturally  free  from  it.  In  the  old-fashioned  orders  of 
creation,  the  supernatural  personages  are  invariably 
conceived  as  greater  than  man,  for  good  or  evil.  In 
the  modern  humanitarian  order  as  adopted  by  Wag- 
ner, Man  is  the  highest.  In  The  Rhine  Gold,  it  is  pre- 
tended that  there  are  as  yet  no  men  on  the  earth. 
There  are  dwarfs,  giants,  and  gods.  The  danger  is 
that  you  will  jump  to  the  conclusion  that  the  gods,  at 


32  The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

least,  are  a  higher  order  than  the  human  order.  On 
the  contrary,  the  world  is  waiting  for  Man  to  redeem 
it  from  the  lame  and  cramped  government  of  the  gods. 
Once  grasp  that;  and  the  allegory  becomes  simple 
enough.  Really,  of  course,  the  dwarfs,  giants,  and 
gods  are  dramatizations  of  the  three  main  orders  of 
men:  to  wit,  the  instinctive,  predatory,  lustful,  greedy 
people;  the  patient,  toiling,  stupid,  respectful,  money- 
worshipping  people;  and  the  intellectual,  moral,  tal- 
ented people  who  devise  and  administer  States  and 
Churches.  History  shows  us  only  one  order  higher 
than  the  highest  of  these:  namely,  the  order  of  Heroes. 
Now  it  is  quite  clear — though  you  have  perhaps 
never  thought  of  it — that  if  the  next  generation  of 
Englishmen  consisted  wholly  of  Julius  Caesars,  all 
our  political,  ecclesiastical,  and  moral  institutions 
would  vanish,  and  the  less  perishable  of  their  ap- 
purtenances be  classed  with  Stonehenge  and  the 
cromlechs  and  round  towers  as  inexplicable  relics  of 
a  bygone  social  order.  Julius  Caesars  would  no  more 
trouble  themselves  about  such  contrivances  as  our 
codes  and  churches  than  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society 
will  touch  his  hat  to  the  squire  and  listen  to  the 
village  curate's  sermons.  This  is  precisely  what  must 
happen  some  day  if  life  continues  thrusting  towards 
higher  and  higher  organization  as  it  has  hitherto  done. 
As  most  of  our  English  professional  men  are  to  Aus- 
tralian bushmen,  so,  we  must  suppose,  will  the  aver- 
age man  of  some  future  day  be  to  Julius  Caesar. 
Let  any  man  of  middle  age,  pondering  this  prospect 
consider  what  has  happened  within  a  single  genera- 


Wagner  as  Revolutionist          33 

tion  to  the  articles  of  faith  his  father  regarded  as 
eternal  nay,  to  the  very  scepticisms  and  blasphemies 
of  his  youth  (Bishop  Colenso's  criticism  of  the  Penta- 
teuch, for  example!);  and  he  will  begin  to  realize 
how  much  of  our  barbarous  Theology  and  Law  the 
man  of  the  future  will  do  without.  Bakoonin,  the 
Dresden  revolutionary  leader  with  whom  Wagner 
went  out  in  1849,  put  forward  later  on  a  program, 
often  quoted  with  foolish  horror,  for  the  abolition  of 
all  institutions,  religious,  political,  juridical,  financial, 
legal,  academic,  and  so  on,  so  as  to  leave  the  will  of 
man  free  to  find  its  own  way.  All  the  loftiest  spirits 
of  that  time  were  burning  to  raise  Man  up,  to  give 
him  self-respect,  to  shake  him  out  of  his  habit  of 
grovelling  before  the  ideals  created  by  his  own  imagin- 
ation, of  attributing  the  good  that  sprang  from  the 
ceaseless  energy  of  the  life  within  himself  to  some 
superior  power  in  the  clouds,  and  of  making  a  fetish 
of  self-sacrifice  to  justify  his  own  cowardice. 

Farther  on  in  The  Ring  we  shall  see  the  Hero  ar- 
rive and  make  an  end  of  dwarfs,  giants,  and  gods. 
Meanwhile,  let  us  not  forget  that  godhood  means  to 
Wagner  infirmity  and  compromise,  and  manhood 
strength  and  integrity.  Above  all,  we  must  under- 
stand— for  it  is  the  key  to  much  that  we  are  to  see — 
that  the  god,  since  his  desire  is  toward  a  higher  and 
fuller  life,  must  long  in  his  inmost  soul  for  the  advent 
of  that  greater  power  whose  first  work,  though  this 
he  does  not  see  as  yet,  must  be  his  own  undoing. 

In  the  midst  of  all  these  far-reaching  ideas,  it  is 
amusing  to  find  Wagner  still  full  of  his  ingrained 


34  The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

theatrical  professionalism,  and  introducing  effects 
which  now  seem  old-fashioned  and  stagey  with  as 
much  energy  and  earnestness  as  if  they  were  his 
loftiest  inspirations.  When  Wotan  wrests  the  ring 
from  Alberic,  the  dwarf  delivers  a  lurid  and  blood- 
curdling stage  curse,  calling  down  on  its  every  future 
possessor  care,  fear,  and  death.  The  musical  phrase 
accompanying  this  outburst  was  a  veritable  harmonic 
and  melodic  bogey  to  mid-century  ears,  though  time 
has  now  robbed  it  of  its  terrors.  It  sounds  again  when 
Fafnir  slays  Fasolt,  and  on  every  subsequent  occasion 
when  the  ring  brings  death  to  its  holder.  This  epi- 
sode must  justify  itself  purely  as  a  piece  of  stage  sen- 
sationalism. On  deeper  ground  it  is  superfluous  and 
confusing,  as  the  ruin  to  which  the  pursuit  of  riches 
leads  needs  no  curse  to  explain  it;  nor  is  there  any 
sense  in  investing  Alberic  with  providential  powers 
in  the  matter. 


THE  VALKYRIES 

BEFORE  the  curtain  rises  on  the  Valkyries,  let  us  see 
what  has  happened  since  it  fell  on  The  Rhine  Gold. 
The  persons  of  the  drama  will  tell  us  presently;  but 
as  we  probably  do  not  understand  German,  that  may 
not  help  us. 

Wotan  is  still  ruling  the  world  in  glory  from  his 
giant-built  castle  with  his  wife  Fricka.  But  he  has  no 
security  for  the  continuance  of  his  reign,  since  Alberic 
may  at  any  moment  contrive  to  recover  the  ring,  the 
full  power  of  which  he  can  wield  because  he  has  for- 
sworn love.  Such  forswearing  is  not  possible  to  Wotan : 
love,  though  not  his  highest  need,  is  a  higher  than 
gold:  otherwise  he  would  be  no  god.  Besides,  as  we 
have  seen,  his  power  has  been  established  in  the  world 
by  and  as  a  system  of  laws  enforced  by  penalties. 
These  he  must  consent  to  be  bound  by  himself;  for  a 
god  who  broke  his  own  laws  would  betray  the  fact 
that  legality  and  conformity  are  not  the  highest  rule 
of  conduct — a  discovery  fatal  to  his  supremacy  as 
Pontiff  and  Lawgiver.  Hence  he  may  not  wrest  the 
ring  unlawfully  from  Fafnir,  even  if  he  could  bring 
himself  to  forswear  love. 


36  The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

In  this  insecurity  he  has  hit  on  the  idea  of  forming 
a  heroic  bodyguard.  He  has  trained  his  love  children 
as  war-maidens  (Valkyries)  whose  duty  it  is  to  sweep 
through  battle-fields  and  bear  away  to  Valhalla  the 
souls  of  the  bravest  who  fall  there.  Thus  reinforced 
by  a  host  of  warriors,  he  has  thoroughly  indoctrinated 
them,  Loki  helping  him  as  dialectician-in-chief,  with 
the  conventional  system  of  law  and  duty,  supernatural 
religion  and  self-sacrificing  idealism,  which  they  be- 
lieve to  be  the  essence  of  his  godhood,  but  which  is 
really  only  the  machinery  of  the  love  of  necessary 
power  which  is  his  mortal  weakness.  This  process 
secures  their  fanatical  devotion  to  his  system  of  govern- 
ment; but  he  knows  perfectly  well  that  such  systems, 
in  spite  of  their  moral  pretensions,  serve  selfish  and 
ambitious  tyrants  better  than  benevolent  despots, 
and  that,  if  once  Alberic  gets  the  ring  back,  he  will 
easily  out-Valhalla  Valhalla,  if  not  buy  it  over  as  a 
going  concern.  The  only  chance  of  permanent  se- 
curity, then,  is  the  appearance  in  the  world  of  a  hero 
who,  without  any  illicit  prompting  from  Wotan,  will 
destroy  Alberic  and  wrest  the  ring  from  Fafnir.  There 
will  then,  he  believes,  be  no  further  cause  for  anxiety, 
since  he  does  not  yet  conceive  Heroism  as  a  force 
hostile  to  Godhead.  In  his  longing  for  a  rescuer,  it 
does  not  occur  to  him  that  when  the  Hero  comes,  his 
first  exploit  must  be  to  sweep  the  gods  and  their 
ordinances  from  the  path  of  the  heroic  will. 

Indeed,  he  feels  that  in  his  own  Godhead  is  the 
germ  of  such  Heroism,  and  that  from  himself  the 
Hero  must  spring.  He  takes  to  wandering,  mostly 


The  Valkyries  37 

in  search  of  love,  from  Fricka  and  Valhalla.  He  seeks 
the  First  Mother;  and  through  her  womb,  eternally 
fertile,  the  inner  true  thought  that  made  him  first  a 
god  is  reborn  as  his  daughter,  uncorrupted  by  his  am- 
bition, unfettered  by  his  machinery  of  power  and  his 
alliances  with  Fricka  and  Loki.  This  daughter,  the 
Valkyrie  Brynhild,  is  his  true  will,  his  real  self,  (as  he 
thinks):  to  her  he  may  say  what  he  must  not  say  to 
anyone,  since  in  speaking  to  her  he  but  speaks  to  him- 
self. "Was  Keinem  in  Worten  unausgesprochen," 
he  says  to  her,  "bleib  es  ewig:  mit  mir  nur  rath'  ich, 
red'  ich  zu  dir." 

But  from  Brynhild  no  hero  can  spring  until  there 
is  a  man  of  Wotan's  race  to  breed  with  her.  Wotan 
wanders  further;  and  a  mortal  woman  bears  him 
twins:  a  son  and  a  daughter.  He  separates  them  by 
letting  the  girl  fall  into  the  hands  of  a  forest  tribe 
which  in  due  time  gives  her  as  a  wife  to  a  fierce  chief, 
one  Hunding.  With  the  son  he  himself  leads  the  life 
of  a  wolf,  and  teaches  him  the  only  power  a  god  can 
teach,  the  power  of  doing  without  happiness.  When 
he  has  given  him  this  terrible  training,  he  abandons 
him,  and  goes  to  the  bridal  feast  of  his  daughter  Sieg- 
linda  and  Hunding.  In  the  blue  cloak  of  the  wan- 
derer, wearing  the  broad  hat  that  flaps  over  the  socket 
of  his  forfeited  eye,  he  appears  in  Hunding's  house, 
the  middle  pillar  of  which  is  a  mighty  tree.  Into  that 
tree,  without  a  word,  he  strikes  a  sword  up  to  the  hilt, 
so  that  only  the  might  of  a  hero  can  withdraw  it. 
Then  he  goes  out  as  silently  as  he  came,  blind  to  the 
truth  that  no  weapon  from  the  armory  of  Godhead 


38  The  Perfect  Wagnerite         Act  i 

can  serve  the  turn  of  the  true  Human  Hero.  Neither 
Hunding  nor  any  of  his  guests  can  move  the  sword; 
and  there  it  stays  awaiting  the  destined  hand.  That 
is  the  history  of  the  generations  between  The  Rhine 
Gold  and  The  Valkyries. 

The  First  Act 

This  time,  as  we  sit  looking  expectantly  at  the 
curtain,  we  hear,  not  the  deep  booming  of  the  Rhine, 
but  the  patter  of  a  forest  downpour,  accompanied  by 
the  mutter  of  a  storm  which  soon  gathers  into  a  roar 
and  culminates  in  crashing  thunderbolts.  As  it  passes 
off,  the  curtain  rises;  and  there  is  no  mistaking  whose 
forest  habitation  we  are  in;  for  the  central  pillar  is  a 
mighty  tree,  and  the  place  fit  for  the  dwelling  of  a 
fierce  chief.  The  door  opens:  and  an  exhausted  man 
reels  in:  an  adept  from  the  school  of  unhappiness. 
Sieglinda  finds  him  lying  on  the  hearth.  He  explains 
that  he  has  been  in  a  fight;  that  his  weapons  not 
being  as  strong  as  his  arms,  were  broken;  and  that  he 
had  to  fly.  He  desires  some  drink  and  a  moment's 
rest;  then  he  will  go;  for  he  is  an  unlucky  person,  and 
does  not  want  to  bring  his  ill-luck  on  the  woman  who 
is  succoring  him.  But  she,  it  appears,  is  also  unhappy; 
and  a  strong  sympathy  springs  up  between  them. 
When  her  husband  arrives,  he  observes  not  only  this 
sympathy,  but  a  resemblance  between  them,  a  gleam 
of  the  snake  in  their  eyes.  They  sit  down  to  table; 
and  the  stranger  tells  them  his  unlucky  story.  He  is 
the  son  of  Wotan,  who  is  known  to  him  only  as 


Act  i  The  Valkyries  39 

Wolfing,  of  the  race  of  the  Volsungs.  The  earliest 
thing  he  remembers  is  returning  from  a  hunt  with  his 
father  to  find  their  home  destroyed,  his  mother 
murdered,  and  his  twin-sister  carried  off.  This  was 
the  work  of  a  tribe  called  the  Neidings,  upon  whom 
he  and  Wolfing  thenceforth  waged  implacable  war 
until  the  day  when  his  father  disappeared,  leaving  no 
trace  of  himself  but  an  empty  wolfskin.  The  young 
Volsung  was  thus  cast  alone  upon  the  world,  finding 
most  hands  against  him,  and  bringing  no  good  luck 
even  to  his  friends.  His  latest  exploit  has  been  the 
slaying  of  certain  brothers  who  were  forcing  their 
sister  to  wed  against  her  will.  The  result  has  been 
the  slaughter  of  the  woman  by  her  brothers'  clansmen, 
and  his  own  narrow  escape  by  flight. 

His  luck  on  this  occasion  is  even  worse  than  he 
supposes;  for  Hunding,  by  whose  hearth  he  has 
taken  refuge,  is  clansman  to  the  slain  brothers  and  is 
bound  to  avenge  them.  He  tells  the  Volsung  that  in 
the  morning,  weapons  or  no  weapons,  he  must  fight 
for  his  life.  Then  he  orders  the  woman  to  bed,  and 
follows  her  himself,  taking  his  spear  with  him. 

The  unlucky  stranger,  left  brooding  by  the  hearth, 
has  nothing  to  console  himself  with  but  an  old  pro- 
mise of  his  father's  that  he  shall  find  a  weapon  to  his 
hand  when  he  most  needs  one.  The  last  flicker  of 
the  dying  fire  strikes  on  the  golden  hilt  of  the  sword 
that  sticks  in  the  tree;  but  he  does  not  see  it;  and 
the  embers  sink  into  blackness.  Then  the  woman 
returns.  Hunding  is  safely  asleep:  she  has  drugged 
him.  She  tells  the  story  of  the  one-eyed  man  who 


40  The  Perfect  Wagnerite        Act  n 

appeared  at  her  forced  marriage,  and  of  the  sword. 
She  has  always  felt,  she  says,  that  her  miseries  will 
end  in  the  arms  of  the  hero  who  shall  succeed  in 
drawing  it  forth.  The  stranger,  diffident  as  he  is 
about  his  luck,  has  no  misgivings  as  to  his  strength 
and  destiny.  He  gives  her  his  affection  at  once,  and 
abandons  himself  to  the  charm  of  the  night  and 
the  season;  for  it  is  the  beginning  of  Spring.  They 
soon  learn  from  their  confidences  that  she  is  his 
stolen  twin-sister.  He  is  transported  to  find  that  the 
heroic  race  of  the  Volsungs  need  neither  perish  nor  be 
corrupted  by  a  lower  strain.  Hailing  the  sword  by 
the  name  of  Nothung  (or  Needed),  he  plucks  it 
from  the  tree  as  her  bride-gift,  and  then,  crying 
"  Both  bride  and  sister  be  of  thy  brother;  and  blossom 
the  blood  of  the  Volsungs!"  clasps  her  as  the  mate 
the  Spring  has  brought  him. 

The  Second  Act 

So  far,  Wotan's  plan  seems  prospering.  In  the 
mountains  he  calls  his  war-maiden  Brynhild,  the  child 
borne  to  him  by  the  First  Mother,  and  bids  her  see 
to  it  that  Hunding  shall  fall  in  the  approaching  com- 
bat. But  he  is  reckoning  without  his  consort,  Fricka. 
What  will  she,  the  Law,  say  to  the  lawless  pair  who 
have  heaped  incest  on  adultery  ?  A  hero  may  have 
defied  the  law,  and  put  his  own  will  in  its  place;  but 
can  a  god  hold  him  guiltless,  when  the  whole  power 
of  the  gods  can  enforce  itself  only  by  law  ?  Fricka, 
shuddering  with  horror,  outraged  in  every  instinct, 


Act  ii  The  Valkyries  41 

comes  clamoring  for  punishment.  Wotan  pleads  the 
general  necessity  of  encouraging  heroism  in  order 
to  keep  up  the  Valhalla  bodyguard;  but  his  remon- 
strances only  bring  upon  him  torrents  of  reproaches 
for  his  own  unfaithfulness  to  the  law  in  roaming 
through  the  world  and  begetting  war-maidens,  "wolf- 
cubs,"  and  the  like.  He  is  hopelessly  beaten  in  the 
argument.  Fricka  is  absolutely  right  when  she  de- 
clares that  the  ending  of  the  gods  began  when  he 
brought  this  wolf-hero  into  the  world;  and  now,  to 
save  their  very  existence,  she  pitilessly  demands  his 
destruction.  Wotan  has  no  power  to  refuse:  it  is 
Fricka's  mechanical  force,  and  not  his  thought,  that 
really  rules  the  world.  He  has  to  recall  Brynhild; 
take  back  his  former  instructions;  and  ordain  that 
Hunding  shall  slay  the  Volsung. 

But  now  comes  another  difficulty.  Brynhild  is  the 
inner  thought  and  will  of  Godhead,  the  aspiration 
from  the  high  life  to  the  higher  that  is  its  divine  ele- 
ment, and  only  becomes  separated  from  it  when  its 
resort  to  kingship  and  priestcraft  for  the  sake  of  tem- 
poral power  has  made  it  false  to  itself.  Hitherto, 
Brynhild,  as  Valkyrie  or  hero  chooser,  has  obeyed 
Wotan  implicitly,  taking  her  work  as  the  holiest  and 
bravest  in  his  kingdom;  and  now  he  tells  her  what  he 
could  not  tell  Fricka — what  indeed  he  could  not  tell 
to  Brynhild,  were  she  not,  as  she  says,  his  own  will — 
the  whole  story  of  Alberic  and  of  that  inspiration 
about  the  raising  up  of  a  hero.  She  thoroughly  ap- 
proves of  the  inspiration;  but  when  the  story  ends  in 
the  assumption  that  she  too  must  obey  Fricka,  and 


42  The  Perfect  Wagnerite        Act  n 

help  Fricka's  vassal,  Hunding,  to  undo  the  great 
work  and  strike  the  hero  down,  she  for  the  first  time 
hesitates  to  accept  his  command.  In  his  fury  and 
despair  he  overawes  her  by  the  most  terrible  threats  of 
his  anger;  and  she  submits. 

Then  comes  the  Volsung  Siegmund,  following  his 
sister  bride,  who  has  fled  into  the  mountains  in  a  re- 
vulsion of  horror  at  having  allowed  herself  to  bring 
her  hero  to  shame.  Whilst  she  is  lying  exhausted  and 
senseless  in  his  arms,  Brynhild  appears  to  him  and 
solemnly  warns  him  that  he  must  presently  leave  the 
earth  with  her.  He  asks  whither  he  must  follow  her. 
To  Valhalla,  to  take  his  place  there  among  the  heroes. 
He  asks,  shall  he  find  his  father  there  ?  Yes.  Shall  he 
find  a  wife  there  ?  Yes :  he  will  be  waited  on  by  beauti- 
ful wish-maidens.  Shall  he  meet  his  sister  there  ? 
No.  Then,  says  Siegmund,  I  will  not  come  with  you. 
She  tries  to  make  him  understand  that  he  cannot  help 
himself.  Being  a  hero,  he  will  not  be  so  persuaded: 
he  has  his  father's  sword,  and  does  not  fear  Hunding. 
But  when  she  tells  him  that  she  comes  from  his  father, 
and  that  the  sword  of  a  god  will  not  avail  in  the  hands 
of  a  hero,  he  accepts  his  fate,  but  will  shape  it  with 
his  own  hand,  both  for  himself  and  his  sister,  by  slay- 
ing her,  and  then  killing  himself  with  the  last  stroke 
of  the  sword.  And  thereafter  he  will  go  to  Hell, 
rather  than  to  Valhalla. 

How  now  can  Brynhild,  being  what  she  is,  choose 
her  side  freely  in  a  conflict  between  this  hero  and 
the  vassal  of  Fricka  ?  By  instinct  she  at  once  throws 
Wotan's  command  to  the  winds,  and  bids  Siegmund 


Act  in  The  Valkyries  43 

nerve  himself  for  the  combat  with  Hunding,  in  which 
she  pledges  him  the  protection  of  her  shield.  The 
horn  of  Hunding  is  soon  heard;  and  Siegmund's 
spirits  rise  to  fighting  pitch  at  once.  The  two  meet; 
and  the  Valkyrie's  shield  is  held  before  the  hero.  But 
when  he  delivers  his  sword-stroke  at  his  foe,  the 
weapon  shivers  on  the  spear  of  Wotan,  who  suddenly 
appears  between  them;  and  the  first  of  the  race  of 
heroes  falls  with  the  weapon  of  the  Law's  vassal 
through  his  breast.  Brynhild  snatches  the  fragments 
of  the  broken  sword,  and  flies,  carrying  off  the  woman 
with  her  on  her  war-horse;  and  Wotan,  in  terrible 
wrath,  slays  Hunding  with  a  wave  of  his  hand,  and 
starts  in  pursuit  of  his  disobedient  daughter. 


The  Third  Act 

On  a  rocky  peak,  four  of  the  Valkyries  are  waiting 
for  the  rest.  The  absent  ones  soon  arrive,  galloping 
through  the  air  with  slain  heroes,  gathered  from  the 
battle-field,  hanging  over  their  saddles.  Only,  Bryn- 
hild, who  comes  last,  has  for  her  spoil  a  live  woman. 
When  her  eight  sisters  learn  that  she  has  defied 
Wotan,  they  dare  not  help  her;  and  Brynhild  has 
to  rouse  Sieglinda  to  make  an  effort  to  save  herself, 
by  reminding  her  that  she  bears  in  her  the  seed  of  a 
hero,  and  must  face  everything,  endure  anything, 
sooner  than  let  that  seed  miscarry.  Sieglinda,  in  a 
transport  of  exaltation,  takes  the  fragments  of  the 
sword  and  flies  into  the  forest.  Then  Wotan  comes; 


44  The  Perfect  Wagnerite       Act  in 

the  sisters  fly  in  terror  at  his  command;  and  he  is  left 
alone  with  Brynhild. 

Here,  then,  we  have  the  first  of  the  inevitable 
moments  which  Wotan  did  not  foresee.  Godhead  has 
now  established  its  dominion  over  the  world  by  a 
mighty  Church,  compelling  obedience  through  its  ally 
the  Law,  with  its  formidable  State  organization  of 
force  of  arms  and  cunning  of  brain.  It  has  submitted 
to  this  alliance  to  keep  the  Plutonic  power  in  check 
— built  it  up  primarily  for  the  sake  of  that  soul  in 
itself  which  cares  only  to  make  the  highest  better  and 
the  best  higher;  and  now  here  is  that  very  soul 
separated  from  it  and  working  for  the  destruction  of 
its  indispensable  ally,  the  lawgiving  State.  How  is 
the  rebel  to  be  disarmed  ?  Slain  it  cannot  be  by  God- 
head, since  it  is  still  Godhead's  own  very  dearest  soul. 
But  hidden,  stifled,  silenced  it  must  be;  or  it  will 
wreck  the  State  and  leave  the  Church  defenceless. 
Not  until  it  passes  completely  away  from  Godhead, 
and  is  reborn  as  the  soul  of  the  hero,  can  it  work  any- 
thing but  the  confusion  and  destruction  of  the  exist- 
ing order.  How  is  the  world  to  be  protected  against  it 
in  the  meantime  ?  Clearly  Loki's  help  is  needed  here: 
it  is  the  Lie  that  must,  on  the  highest  principles,  hide 
the  Truth.  Let  Loki  surround  this  mountain  top 
with  the  appearance  of  a  consuming  fire;  and  who 
will  dare  penetrate  to  Brynhild  ?  It  is  true  that  if 
any  man  will  walk  boldly  into  that  fire,  he  will  dis- 
cover it  at  once  to  be  a  lie,  an  illusion,  a  mirage 
through  which  he  might  carry  a  sack  of  gunpowder 
without  being  a  penny  the  worse.  Therefore  let  the 


Act  in  The  Valkyries  45 

fire  seem  so  terrible  that  only  the  hero,  when  in  the 
fulness  of  time  he  appears  upon  earth,  will  venture 
through  it;  and  the  problem  is  solved.  Wotan,  with 
a  breaking  heart,  takes  leave  of  Brynhild;  throws  her 
into  a  deep  sleep;  covers  her  with  her  long  warshield; 
summons  Loki,  who  comes  in  the  shape  of  a  wall  of 
fire  surrounding  the  mountain  peak;  and  turns  his 
back  on  Brynhild  for  ever. 

The  allegory  here  is  happily  not  so  glaringly 
obvious  to  the  younger  generations  of  our  educated 
classes  as  it  was  forty  years  ago.  In  those  days,  any 
child  who  expressed  a  doubt  as  to  the  absolute  truth 
of  the  Church's  teaching,  even  to  the  extent  of  asking 
why  Joshua  told  the  sun  to  stand  still  instead  of  telling 
the  earth  to  cease  turning,  or  of  pointing  out  that  a 
whale's  throat  would  hardly  have  been  large  enough 
to  swallow  Jonah,  was  unhesitatingly  told  that  if  it 
harboured  such  doubts  it  would  spend  all  eternity 
after  its  death  in  horrible  torments  in  a  lake  of  burn- 
ing brimstone.  It  is  difficult  to  write  or  read  this 
nowadays  without  laughing;  yet  no  doubt  millions  of 
ignorant  and  credulous  people  are  still  teaching  their 
children  that.  When  Wagner  himself  was  a  little 
child,  the  fact  that  hell  was  a  fiction  devised  for  the  in- 
timidation and  subjection  of  the  masses,  was  a  well- 
kept  secret  of  the  thinking  and  governing  classes.  At 
that  time  the  fires  of  Loki  were  a  very  real  terror  to 
all  except  persons  of  exceptional  force  of  character 
and  intrepidity  of  thought.  Even  thirty  years  after 
Wagner  had  printed  the  verses  of  The  Ring  for 
private  circulation,  we  find  him  excusing  himself 


46  The  Perfect  Wagnerite        Act  in 

from  perfectly  explicit  denial  of  current  superstitions, 
by  reminding  his  readers  that  it  would  expose  him  to 
prosecution.  In  England,  so  many  of  our  respectable 
voters  are  still  grovelling  in  a  gloomy  devil  worship, 
of  which  the  fires  of  Loki  are  the  main  bulwark,  that 
no  Government  has  yet  had  the  conscience  or  the 
courage  to  repeal  our  monstrous  laws  against  "blas- 
phemy." 


SIEGFRIED 

SIEGLJNDA,  when  she  flies  into  the  forest  with  the 
hero's  son  unborn  in  her  womb,  and  the  broken 
pieces  of  his  sword  in  her  hand,  finds  shelter  in  the 
smithy  of  a  dwarf,  where  she  brings  forth  her  child 
and  dies.  This  dwarf  is  no  other  than  Mimmy,  the 
brother  of  Alberic,  the  same  who  made  for  him  the 
magic  helmet.  His  aim  in  life  is  to  gain  possession  of 
the  helmet,  the  ring,  and  the  treasure,  and  through 
them  to  obtain  that  Plutonic  mastery  of  the  world 
under  the  beginnings  of  which  he  himself  writhed 
during  Alberic's  brief  reign.  Mimmy  is  a  blinking, 
shambling,  ancient  creature,  too  weak  and  timid  to 
dream  of  taking  arms  himself  to  despoil  Fafnir,  who 
still,  transformed  to  a  monstrous  serpent,  broods  on 
the  gold  in  a  hole  in  the  rocks.  Mimmy  needs  the 
help  of  a  hero  for  that;  and  he  has  craft  enough  to 
know  that  it  is  quite  possible,  and  indeed  much  in 
the  ordinary  way  of  the  world,  for  senile  avarice  and 
craft  to  set  youth  and  bravery  to  work  to  win  empire 
for  it.  He  knows  the  pedigree  of  the  child  left  on  his 
hands,  and  nurses  it  to  manhood  with  great  care. 
His  pains  are  too  well  rewarded  for  his  comfort. 


48  The  Perfect  Wagnerite         Act  i 

The  boy  Siegfried,  having  no  god  to  instruct  him  in 
the  art  of  unhappiness,  inherits  none  of  his  father's  ill 
luck,  and  all  his  father's  hardihood.  The  fear  against 
which  Siegmund  set  his  face  like  flint,  and  the  woe 
which  he  wore  down,  are  unknown  to  the  son.  The 
father  was  faithful  and  grateful:  the  son  knows  no 
law  but  his  own  humor;  detests  the  ugly  dwarf  who 
has  nursed  him;  chafes  furiously  under  his  claims  for 
some  return  for  his  tender  care;  and  is,  in  short, 
a  totally  unmoral  person,  a  born  anarchist,  the  ideal 
of  Bakoonin,  an  anticipation  of  the  "overman"  of 
Nietzsche.  He  is  enormously  strong,  full  of  life  and 
fun,  dangerous  and  destructive  to  what  he  dislikes, 
and  affectionate  to  what  he  likes;  so  that  it  is  fortu- 
nate that  his  likes  and  dislikes  are  sane  and  healthy. 
Altogether  an  inspiriting  young  forester,  a  son  of  the 
morning,  in  whom  the  heroic  race  has  come  out  into 
the  sunshine  from  the  clouds  of  his  grandfather's 
majestic  entanglements  with  law,  and  the  night  of  his 
father's  tragic  struggle  with  it. 

The  First  Act 

Mimmy's  smithy  is  a  cave,  in  which  he  hides  from 
the  light  like  the  eyeless  fish  of  the  American  caverns. 
Before  the  curtain  rises  the  music  already  tells  us 
that  we  are  groping  in  darkness.  When  it  does  rise 
Mimmy  is  in  difficulties.  He  is  trying  to  make  a 
sword  for  his  nursling,  who  is  now  big  enough  to  take 
the  field  against  Fafnir.  Mimmy  can  make  mis- 
chievous swords;  but  it  is  not  with  dwarfmade 


Act  i  Siegfried  49 

weapons  that  heroic  man  will  hew  the  way  of  his  own 
will  through  religions  and  governments  and  plutoc- 
racies and  all  the  other  devices  of  the  kingdom  of 
the  fears  of  the  unheroic.  As  fast  as  Mimmy  makes 
swords,  Siegfried  Bakoonin  smashes  them,  and  then 
takes  the  poor  old  swordsmith  by  the  scruff  of  the 
neck  and  chastises  him  wrathfully.  The  particular 
day  on  which  the  curtain  rises  begins  with  one  of  these 
trying  domestic  incidents.  Mimmy  has  just  done  his 
best  with  a  new  sword  of  surpassing  excellence.  Sieg- 
fried returns  home  in  rare  spirits  with  a  wild  bear,  to 
the  extreme  terror  of  the  wretched  dwarf.  When  the 
bear  is  dismissed,  the  new  sword  is  produced.  It  is 
promptly  smashed,  as  usual,  with,  also,  the  usual 
effects  on  the  temper  of  Siegfried,  who  is  quite 
boundless  in  his  criticisms  of  the  smith's  boasted 
skill,  and  declares  that  he  would  smash  the  sword's 
maker  too  if  he  were  not  too  disgusting  to  be  handled. 
Mimmy  falls  back  on  his  stock  defence:  a  string 
of  maudlin  reminders  of  the  care  with  which  he  has 
nursed  the  little  boy  into  manhood.  Siegfried  replies 
candidly  that  the  strangest  thing  about  all  this  care  is 
that  instead  of  making  him  grateful,  it  inspires  him 
with  a  lively  desire  to  wring  the  dwarf's  neck.  Only, 
he  admits  that  he  always  comes  back  to  his  Mimmy, 
though  he  loathes  him  more  than  any  living  thing  in 
the  forest.  On  this  admission  the  dwarf  attempts  to 
build  a  theory  of  filial  instinct.  He  explains  that  he  is 
Siegfried's  father,  and  that  this  is  why  Siegfried  can- 
not do  without  him.  But  Siegfried  has  learned  from 
his  forest  companions,  the  birds  and  foxes  and  wolves, 


50  The  Perfect  Wagnerite         Act  i 

that  mothers  as  well  as  fathers  go  to  the  making  of 
children.  Mimmy,  on  the  desperate  ground  that 
man  is  neither  bird  nor  fox,  declares  that  he  is 
Siegfried's  father  and  mother  both.  He  is  promptly 
denounced  as  a  filthy  liar,  because  the  birds  and  foxes 
are  exactly  like  their  parents,  whereas  Siegfried,  hav- 
ing often  watched  his  own  image  in  the  water,  can 
testify  that  he  is  no  more  like  Mimmy  than  a  toad  is 
like  a  trout.  Then,  to  place  the  conversation  on  a 
plane  of  entire  frankness,  he  throttles  Mimmy  until  he 
is  speechless.  When  the  dwarf  recovers,  he  is  so 
daunted  that  he  tells  Siegfried  the  truth  about  his 
birth,  and  for  testimony  thereof  produces  the  pieces  of 
the  sword  that  broke  upon  Wotan's  spear.  Siegfried 
instantly  orders  him  to  repair  the  sword  on  pain  of 
an  unmerciful  thrashing,  and  rushes  off  into  the  for- 
est, rejoicing  in  the  discovery  that  he  is  no  kin  of 
Mimmy's,  and  need  have  no  more  to  do  with  him 
when  the  sword  is  mended. 

Poor  Mimmy  is  now  in  a  worse  plight  than  ever; 
for  he  has  long  ago  found  that  the  sword  utterly 
defies  his  skill:  the  steel  will  yield  neither  to  his  ham- 
mer nor  to  his  furnace.  Just  then  there  walks  into 
his  cave  a  Wanderer,  in  a  blue  mantle,  spear  in  hand, 
with  one  eye  concealed  by  the  brim  of  his  wide  hat. 
Mimmy,  not  by  nature  hospitable,  tries  to  drive  him 
away;  but  the  Wanderer  announces  himself  as  a  wise 
man,  who  can  tell  his  host,  in  emergency,  what  it  most 
concerns  him  to  know.  Mimmy,  taking  this  offer  in 
high  dudgeon,  because  it  implies  that  his  visitor's  wits 
are  better  than  his  own,  offers  to  tell  the  wise  one 


Act  i  Siegfried  5 1 

something'that  he  does  not  know:  to  wit,  the  way  to 
the  door.  The  imperturbable  Wanderer's  reply  is  to 
sit  down  and  challenge  the  dwarf  to  a  trial  of  wit. 
He  wagers  his  head  against  Mimmy's  that  he  will 
answer  any  three  questions  the  dwarf  can  put  to  him. 

Now  here  were  Mimmy's  opportunity,  had  he  only 
the  wit  to  ask  what  he  wants  to  know,  instead  of  pre- 
tending to  know  everything  already.  It  is  above  all 
things  needful  to  him  at  this  moment  to  find  out  how 
that  sword  can  be  mended;  and  there  has  just  drop- 
ped in  upon  him  in  his  need  the  one  person  who  can 
tell  him.  In  such  circumstances  a  wise  man  would 
hasten  to  show  to  his  visitor  his  three  deepest  ignor- 
ances, and  ask  him  to  dispel  them.  The  dwarf, 
being  a  crafty  fool,  desiring  only  to  detect  ignorance 
in  his  guest,  asks  him  for  information  on  the  three 
points  on  which  he  is  proudest  of  being  thoroughly  well 
instructed  himself.  His  three  questions  are,  Who 
dwell  under  the  earth  ?  Who  dwell  on  the  earth  ?  and 
Who  dwell  in  the  cloudy  heights  above  ?  The  Wan- 
derer, in  reply,  tells  him  of  the  dwarfs  and  of  Alberic; 
of  the  earth,  and  the  giants  Fasolt  and  Fafnir;  of 
the  gods  and  of  Wotan:  himself,  as  Mimmy  now 
recognizes  with  awe. 

Next,  it  is  Mimmy's  turn  to  face  three  questions. 
What  is  that  race,  dearest  to  Wotan,  against  which 
Wotan  has  nevertheless  done  his  worst  ?  Mimmy  can 
answer  that:  he  knows  the  Volsungs,  the  race  of 
heroes  born  of  Wotan's  infidelities  to  Fricka,  and  can 
tell  the  Wanderer  the  whole  story  of  the  twins  and 
their  son  Siegfried.  Wotan  compliments  him  on  his 


52  The  Perfect  Wagnerite          Act  i 

knowledge,  and  asks  further  with  what  sword 
Siegfried  will  slay  Fafnir  ?  Mimmy  can  answer  that 
too:  he  has  the  whole  history  of  the  sword  at  his 
fingers'  ends.  Wotan  hails  him  as  the  knowingest  of 
the  knowing,  and  then  hurls  at  him  the  question  he 
should  himself  have  asked:  Who  will  mend  the 
sword  ?  Mimmy,  his  head  forfeited,  confesses  with 
loud  lamentations  that  he  cannot  answer.  The 
Wanderer  reads  him  an  appropriate  little  lecture  on 
the  folly  of  being  too  clever  to  ask  what  he  wants  to 
know,  and  informs  him  that  a  smith  to  whom  fear  is 
unknown  will  mend  Nothung.  To  this  smith  he 
leaves  the  forfeited  head  of  his  host,  and  wanders  off 
into  the  forest.  Then  Mimmy's  nerves  give  way 
completely.  He  shakes  like  a  man  in  delirium 
tremens,  and  has  a  horrible  nightmare,  in  the  supreme 
convulsion  of  which  Siegfried,  returning  from  the 
forest,  presently  finds  him. 

A  curious  and  amusing  conversation  follows.  Sieg- 
fried himself  does  not  know  fear,  and  is  impatient  to 
acquire  it  as  an  accomplishment.  Mimmy  is  all  fear: 
the  world  for  him  is  a  phantasmagoria  of  terrors.  It 
is  not  that  he  is  afraid  of  being  eaten  by  bears  in  the 
forest,  or  of  burning  his  fingers  in  the  forge  fire.  A 
lively  objection  to  being  destroyed  or  maimed  does 
not  make  a  man  a  coward:  on  the  contrary,  it  is  the 
beginning  of  a  brave  man's  wisdom.  But  in  Mimmy, 
fear  is  not  the  effect  of  danger:  it  is  natural  quality 
of  him  which  no  security  can  allay.  He  is  like  many  a 
poor  newspaper  editor,  who  dares  not  print  the  truth, 
however  simple,  even  when  it  is  obvious  to  himself 


Act  i  Siegfried  53 

and  all  his  readers.  Not  that  anything  unpleasant 
would  happen  to  him  if  he  did — not,  indeed  that  he 
could  fail  to  become  a  distinguished  and  influential 
leader  of  opinion  by  fearlessly  pursuing  such  a 
course,  but  solely  because  he  lives  in  a  world  of 
imaginary  terrors,  rooted  in  a  modest  and  gentleman- 
ly mistrust  of  his  own  strength  and  worth,  and  con- 
sequently of  the  value  of  his  opinion.  Just  so  is 
Mimmy  afraid  of  anything  that  can  do  him  any  good, 
especially  of  the  light  and  the  fresh  air.  He  is  also 
convinced  that  anybody  who  is  not  sufficiently  steeped 
in  fear  to  be  constantly  on  his  guard,  must  perish 
immediately  on  his  first  sally  into  the  world.  To 
preserve  Siegfried  for  the  enterprise  to  which  he  has 
destined  him  he  makes  a  grotesque  attempt  to  teach 
him  fear.  He  appeals  to  his  experience  of  the  terrors 
of  the  forest,  of  its  dark  places,  of  its  threatening  noises, 
its  stealthy  ambushes,  its  sinister  flickering  lights, 
its  heart-tightening  ecstasies  of  dread. 

All  this  has  no  other  effect  than  to  fill  Siegfried  with 
wonder  and  curiosity;  for  the  forest  is  a  place  of  de- 
light for  him.  He  is  as  eager  to  experience  Mimmy's 
terrors  as  a  schoolboy  to  feel  what  an  electric  shock 
is  like.  Then  Mimmy  has  the  happy  idea  of  des- 
cribing Fafnir  to  him  as  a  likely  person  to  give  him  an 
exemplary  fright.  Siegfried  jumps  at  the  idea,  and, 
since  Mimmy  cannot  mend  the  sword  for  him,  pro- 
poses to  set  to  work  then  and  there  to  mend  it  for  him- 
self. Mimmy  shakes  his  head,  and  bids  him  see  now 
how  his  youthful  laziness  and  frowardness  have 
found  him  out —  how  he  would  not  learn  the  smith's 


54  The  Perfect  Wagnerite        Act  n 

craft  from  Professor  Mimmy,  and  therefore  does  not 
know  how  even  to  begin  mending  the  sword.  Sieg- 
fried Bakoonin's  retort  is  simple  and  crushing. 
He  points  out  that  the  net  result  of  Mimmy's  acad- 
emic skill  is  that  he  can  neither  make  a  decent 
sword  himself  nor  even  set  one  to  rights  when  it  is 
damaged.  Reckless  of  the  remonstrances  of  the 
scandalized  professor,  he  seizes  a  file,  and  in  a  few 
moments  utterly  destroys  the  fragments  of  the  sword 
by  rasping  them  into  a  heap  of  steel  filings.  Then 
he  puts  the  filings  into  a  crucible;  buries  it  in  the 
coals;  and  sets  to  at  the  bellows  with  the  shouting 
exultation  of  the  anarchist  who  destroys  only  to 
clear  the  ground  for  creation.  When  the  steel  is 
melted  he  runs  it  into  a  mould;  andlo!  a  sword-blade 
in  the  rough.  Mimmy,  amazed  at  the  success  of  this 
violation  of  all  the  rules  of  his  craft,  hails  Siegfried 
as  the  mightiest  of  smiths,  professing  himself  barely 
worthy  to  be  his  cook  and  scullion;  and  forthwith 
proceeds  to  poison  some  soup  for  him  so  that  he  may 
murder  him  safely  when  Fafnir  is  slain.  Meanwhile 
Siegfried  forges  and  tempers  and  hammers  and  rivets, 
uproariously  singing  the  while  as  nonsensically  as  the 
Rhine  maidens  themselves.  Finally  he  assails  the 
anvil  on  which  Mimmy's  swords  have  been  shattered, 
and  cleaves  it  with  a  mighty  stroke  of  the  newly 
forged  Nothung. 

The  Second  Act 
In  the  darkest  hour  before  the  dawn  of  that  night, 


Act  ii  Siegfried  55 

we  find  ourselves  before  the  cave  of  Fafnir;  and  there 
we  find  Alberic,  who  can  find  nothing  better  to  do 
with  himself  than  to  watch  the  haunt  of  the  dragon, 
and  eat  his  heart  out  in  vain  longing  for  the  gold  and 
the  ring.  The  wretched  Fafnir,  once  an  honest 
giant,  can  only  make  himself  terrible  enough  to  keep 
his  gold  by  remaining  a  venomous  reptile.  Why  he 
should  not  become  an  honest  giant  again,  and  clear 
out  of  his  cavern,  leaving  the  gold  and  the  ring  and  the 
rest  of  it  for  anyone  fool  enough  to  take  them  at  such  a 
price,  is  the  first  question  that  would  occur  to  anyone 
except  a  civilized  man,  who  would  be  too  accustomed 
to  that  sort  of  mania  to  be  at  all  surprised  at  it. 

To  Alberic  in  the  night  comes  the  Wanderer, 
whom  the  dwarf,  recognizing  his  despoiler  of  old, 
abuses  as  a  shameless  thief,  taunting  him  with  the 
helpless  way  in  which  all  his  boasted  power  is  tied  up 
with  the  laws  and  bargains  recorded  on  the  haft  of 
his  spear,  which,  says  Alberic  truly,  would  crumble 
like  chaff  in  his  hands  if  he  dared  use  it  for  his  own 
real  ends.  Wotan,  having  already  had  to  kill  his 
own  son  with  it,  knows  that  very  well;  but  it  troubles 
him  no  more;  for  he  is  now  at  last  rising  to  abhorrence 
of  his  own  artificial  power,  and  looking  to  the  coming 
hero,  not  for  its  consolidation  but  its  destruction. 
When  Alberic  breaks  out  again  with  his  still  un- 
quenched  hope  of  one  day  destroying  the  gods  and 
ruling  the  world  through  the  ring,  Wotan  is  no  longer 
shocked.  He  tells  Alberic  that  Brother  Mime  ap- 
proaches with  a  hero  whom  Godhead  can  neither  help 
nor  hinder.  Alberic  may  try  his  luck  against  him 


56  The  Perfect  Wagnerite        Act  n 

without  disturbance  from  Valhalla.  Perhaps,  he 
suggests,  if  Alberic  warns  Fafnir,  and  offers  to  deal 
with  the  hero  for  him,  Fafnir  may  give  him  the  ring. 
They  accordingly  wake  up  the  dragon,  who  con- 
descends to  enter  into  bellowing  conversation,  but 
is  proof  against  their  proposition,  strong  in  the  magic 
of  property.  "I  have  and  hold,"  he  says:  "leave 
me  to  sleep."  Wotan,  with  a  wise  laugh,  turns  to 
Alberic.  "That  shot  missed,"  he  says:  "no  use 
abusing  me  for  it.  And  now  let  me  tell  you  one 
thing.  All  things  happen  according  to  their  nature; 
and  you  can't  alter  them."  And  so  he  leaves  him. 
Alberic,  raging  with  the  sense  that  his  old  enemy  has 
been  laughing  at  him,  and  yet  prophetically  con- 
vinced that  the  last  word  will  not  be  with  the  god, 
hides  himself  as  the  day  breaks,  and  his  brother 
approaches  with  Siegfried. 

Mimmy  makes  a  final  attempt  to  frighten  Siegfried 
by  discoursing  of  the  dragon's  terrible  jaws,  poisonous 
breath,  corrosive  spittle,  and  deadly,  stinging  tail. 
Siegfried  is  not  interested  in  the  tail:  he  wants  to 
know  whether  the  dragon  has  a  heart,  being  confident 
of  his  ability  to  stick  Nothung  into  it  if  it  exists.  Re- 
assured on  this  point,  he  drives  Mimmy  away,  and 
stretches  himself  under  the  trees,  listening  to  the 
morning  chatter  of  the  birds.  One  of  them  has  a 
great  deal  to  say  to  him;  but  he  cannot  understand 
it;  and  after  vainly  trying  to  carry  on  the  conversation 
with  a  reed  which  he  cuts,  he  takes  to  entertaining  the 
bird  with  tunes  on  his  horn,  asking  it  to  send  him  a 
loving  mate  such  as  all  the  other  creatures  of  the 


Act  ii  Siegfried  57 

forest  have.  His  tunes  wake  up  the  dragon;  and 
Siegfried  makes  merry  over  the  grim  mate  the  bird 
has  sent  him.  Fafnir  is  highly  scandalized  by  the 
irreverence  of  the  young  Bakoonin.  He  loses  his 
temper;  fights;  and  is  forthwith  slain,  to  his  own 
great  astonishment. 

In  such  conflicts  one  learns  to  interpret  the  messages 
of  Nature  a  little.  When  Siegfried,  stung  by  the 
dragon's  vitriolic  blood,  pops  his  finger  into  his 
mouth  and  tastes  it,  he  understands  what  the  bird 
is  saying  to  him,  and,  instructed  by  it  concerning  the 
treasures  within  his  reach,  goes  into  the  cave  to 
secure  the  gold,  the  ring  and  the  wishing  cap.  Then 
Mimmy  returns,  and  is  confronted  by  Alberic.  The 
two  quarrel  furiously  over  the  sharing  of  the  booty 
they  have  not  yet  secured,  until  Siegfried  comes  from 
the  cave  with  the  ring  and  the  helmet,  not  much 
impressed  by  the  heap  of  gold,  and  disappointed  be- 
cause he  has  not  yet  learned  to  fear. 

He  has,  however,  learnt  to  read  the  thoughts  of 
such  a  creature  as  poor  Mimmy,  who,  intending  to 
overwhelm  him  with  flattery  and  fondness,  only 
succeeds  in  making  such  a  self-revelation  of  murder- 
ous envy  that  Siegfried  smites  him  with  Nothung  and 
slays  him,  to  the  keen  satisfaction  of  the  hidden 
Alberic.  Caring  nothing  for  the  gold,  which  he  leaves 
to  the  care  of  the  slain;  disappointed  in  his  fancy  for 
learning  fear;  and  longing  for  a  mate,  he  casts  him- 
self wearily  down,  and  again  appeals  to  his  friend 
the  bird,  who  tells  him  of  a  woman  sleeping  on  a 
mountain  peak  within  a  fortress  of  fire  that  only  the 


58  The  Perfect  Wagnerite       Act  in 

fearless  can  penetrate.  Siegfried  is  up  in  a  moment 
with  all  the  tumult  of  spring  in  his  veins,  and  follows 
the  flight  of  the  bird  as  it  pilots  him  to  the  fiery 
mountain. 

The  Third  Act 

To  the  root  of  the  mountain  comes  also  the  Wan- 
derer, now  nearing  his  doom.  He  calls  up  the  First 
Mother  from  the  depths  of  the  earth,  and  begs  counsel 
from  her.  She  bids  him  confer  with  the  Norns  (the 
Fates).  But  they  are  of  no  use  to  him :  what  he  seeks 
is  some  foreknowledge  of  the  way  of  the  Will  in  its 
perpetual  strife  with  these  helpless  Fates  who  can 
only  spin  the  net  of  circumstance  and  environment 
round  the  feet  of  men.  Why  not,  says  Erda  then,  go 
to  the  daughter  I  bore  you,  and  take  counsel  with  her  ? 
He  has  to  explain  how  he  has  cut  himself  off  from  her, 
and  set  the  fires  of  Loki  between  the  world  and  her 
counsel.  In  that  case  the  First  Mother  cannot  help 
him:  such  a  separation  is  part  of  the  bewilderment 
that  is  ever  the  first  outcome  of  her  eternal  work  of 
thrusting  the  life  energy  of  the  world  to  higher  and 
higher  organization.  She  can  show  him  no  way  of 
escape  from  the  destruction  he  foresees.  Then  from 
the  innermost  of  him  breaks  the  confession  that  he 
rejoices  in  his  doom,  and  now  himself  exults  in  pass- 
ing away  with  all  his  ordinances  and  alliances,  with 
the  spear-sceptre  which  he  has  only  wielded  on  con- 
dition of  slaying  his  dearest  children  with  it,  with  the 
kingdom,  the  power  and  the  glory  which  will  never 


Act  in  Siegfried  59 

again  boast  themselves  as  "  world  without  end."  And 
so  he  dismisses  Erda  to  her  sleep  in  the  heart  of  the 
earth  as  the  forest  bird  draws  near,  piloting  the  slain 
son's  son  to  his  goal. 

Now  it  is  an  excellent  thing  to  triumph  in  the  vic- 
tory of  the  new  order  and  the  passing  away  of  the  old; 
but  if  you  happen  to  be  part  of  the  old  order  your- 
self, you  must  none  the  less  fight  for  your  life.  It 
seems  hardly  possible  that  the  British  army  at  the 
battle  of  Waterloo  did  not  include  at  least  one  Eng- 
lishman intelligent  enough  to  hope,  for  the  sake  of 
his  country  and  humanity,  that  Napoleon  might 
defeat  the  allied  sovereigns;  but  such  an  Englishman 
would  kill  a  French  cuirassier  rather  than  be  killed 
by  him  just  as  energetically  as  the  silliest  soldier,  ever 
encouraged  by  people  who  ought  to  know  better,  to 
call  his  ignorance,  ferocity  and  folly,  patriotism  and 
duty.  Outworn  life  may  have  become  mere  error; 
but  it  still  claims  the  right  to  die  a  natural  death,  and 
will  raise  its  hand  against  the  millennium  itself  in 
self-defence  if  it  tries  to  come  by  the  short  cut  of 
murder.  Wotan  finds  this  out  when  he  comes  face  to 
face  with  Siegfried,  who  is  brought  to  a  standstill  at 
the  foot  of  the  mountain  by  the  disappearance  of  the 
bird.  Meeting  the  Wanderer  there,  he  asks  him  the 
way  to  the  mountain  where  a  woman  sleeps  sur- 
rounded by  fire.  The  Wanderer  questions  him,  and 
extracts  his  story  from  him,  breaking  into  fatherly 
delight  when  Siegfried,  describing  the  mending  of 
the  sword  remarks,  that  all  he  knew  about  the  busi- 
ness was  that  the  broken  bits  of  Nothung  would  be  of 


60  The  Perfect  Wagnerite       Act  in 

no  use  to  him  unless  he  made  a  new  sword  out  of 
them  right  over  again  from  the  beginning.  But  the 
Wanderer's  interest  is  by  no  means  reciprocated  by 
Siegfried.  His  majesty  and  elderly  dignity  are 
thrown  away  on  the  young  anarchist,  who,  unwilling 
to  waste  time  talking,  bluntly  bids  him  either  show  him 
the  way  to  the  mountain,  or  else  "shut  his  muzzle." 
Wotan  is  a  little  hurt.  "Patience,  my  lad,"  he 
says:  "  if  you  were  an  old  man  I  should  treat 
you  with  respect."  "That  would  be  a  precious 
notion,"  says  Siegfried.  "All  my  life  long  I  was 
bothered  and  hampered  by  an  old  man  until  I  swept 
him  out  of  my  way.  I  will  sweep  you  in  the  same 
fashion  if  you  dont  let  me  pass.  Why  do  you  wear 
such  a  big  hat;  and  what  has  happened  to  one  of 
your  eyes  ?  Was  it  knocked  out  by  somebody  whose 
way  you  obstructed  ?"  To  which  Wotan  replies  al- 
legorically  that  the  eye  that  is  gone — the  eye  that 
his  marriage  with  Fricka  cost  him — is  now  looking 
at  him  out  of  Siegfried's  head.  At  this,  Siegfried  gives 
up  the  Wanderer  as  a  lunatic,  and  renews  his  threats 
of  personal  violence.  Then  Wotan  throws  off  the 
mask  of  the  Wanderer;  uplifts  the  world-governing 
spear;  and  puts  forth  all  his  divine  awe  and  grandeur 
as  the  guardian  of  the  mountain,  round  the  crest  of 
which  the  fires  of  Loki  now  break  into  a  red  back- 
ground for  the  majesty  of  the  god.  But  all  this  is 
lost  on  Siegfried  Bakoonin.  "Aha!"  he  cries,  as  the 
spear  is  levelled  against  his  breast:  "I  have  found 
my  father's  foe";  and  the  spear  falls  in  two  pieces 
under  the  stroke  of  Nothung.  "Up  then,"  says 


Act  in  Siegfried  61 

Wotan:  "I  cannot  withhold  you,"  and  disappears 
forever  from  the  eye  of  man.  The  fires  roll  down 
the  mountain;  but  Siegfried  goes  at  them  as  exul- 
tantly as  he  went  at  the  forging  of  the  sword  or  the 
heart  of  the  dragon,  and  shoulders  his  way  through 
them,  joyously  sounding  his  horn  to  the  accompani- 
ment of  their  crackling  and  seething.  And  never  a 
hair  of  his  head  is  singed.  Those  frightful 
flames  which  have  scared  mankind  for  centuries 
from  the  Truth,  have  not  heat  enough  in  them 
to  make  a  child  shut  its  eyes.  They  are  mere 
phantasmagoria,  highly  creditable  to  Loki's  imag- 
inative stage-management;  but  nothing  ever  has 
perished  or  will  perish  eternally  in  them  except 
the  Churches  which  have  been  so  poor  and  faith- 
less as  to  trade  for  their  power  on  the  lies  of  a 
romancer. 

BACK   TO    OPERA    AGAIN 

AND  now,  O  Nibelungen  Spectator,  pluck  up;  for  all 
allegories  come  to  an  end  somewhere;  and  the  hour 
of  your  release  from  these  explanations  is  at  hand. 
The  rest  of  what  you  are  going  to  see  is  opera,  and 
nothing  but  opera.  Before  many  bars  have  been 
played,  Siegfried  and  the  wakened  Brynhild,  newly 
become  tenor  and  soprano,  will  sing  a  concerted 
cadenza;  plunge  on  from  that  to  a  magnificent  love 
duet;  and  end  with  a  precipitous  allegro  a  capella, 
driven  headlong  to  its  end  by  the  impetuous  semi- 
quaver triplets  of  the  famous  finales  to  the  first  act  of 


62  The  Perfect  Wagnerite       Act  in 

Don  Giovanni  or  the  coda  to  the  Leonore  over- 
ture, with  a  specifically  contrapuntal  theme,  points 
d'orgue,  and  a  high  C  for  the  soprano  all  complete. 

What  is  more,  the  work  which  follows,  entitled 
Night  Falls  On  The  Gods,  is  a  thorough  grand  opera. 
In  it  you  shall  see  what  you  have  so  far  missed,  the 
opera  chorus  in  full  parade  on  the  stage,  not  presum- 
ing to  interfere  with  the  prima  donna  as  she  sings  her 
death  song  over  the  footlights.  Nay,  that  chorus  will 
have  its  own  chance  when  it  first  appears,  with  a  good 
roaring  strain  in  C  major,  not,  after  all,  so  very 
different  from,  or  at  all  less  absurd  than  the  choruses 
of  courtiers  in  La  Favorita  or  "Per  te  immenso 
giubilo"  in  Lucia.  The  harmony  is  no  doubt  a  little 
developed,  Wagner  augmenting  his  fifths  with  a  G 
sharp  where  Donizetti  would  have  put  his  fingers  in 
his  ears  and  screamed  for  G  natural.  But  it  is  an 
opera  chorus  all  the  same;  and  along  with  it  we  have 
theatrical  grandiosities  that  recall  Meyerbeer  and 
Verdi:  pezzi  d'insieme  for  all  the  principals  in  a  row, 
vengeful  conjurations  for  trios  of  them,  romantic 
death  song  for  the  tenor:  in  short,  all  manner  of 
operatic  conventions. 

Now  it  is  probable  that  some  of  us  will  have  been 
so  talked  by  the  more  superstitious  Bayreuth  pilgrims 
into  regarding  Die  Gotterdammerung  as  the  mighty 
climax  to  a  mighty  epic,  more  Wagnerian  than  all  the 
other  three  sections  put  together,  as  not  to  dare 
notice  this  startling  atavism,  especially  if  we  find  the 
trio-conjurations  more  exhilarating  than  the  meta- 
physical discourses  of  Wotan  in  the  three  true  music 


Act  in  Siegfried  63 

dramas  of  The  Ring.  There  is,  however,  no  real 
atavism  involved.  Die  Gotterdammerung,  though 
the  last  of  The  Ring  dramas  in  order  of  performance, 
was  the  first  in  order  of  conception,  and  was  indeed 
the  root  from  which  all  the  others  sprang. 

The  history  of  the  matter  is  as  follows.  All 
Wagner's  works  prior  to  The  Ring  are  operas.  The 
last  of  them,  Lohengrin,  is  perhaps  the  best  known 
of  modern  operas.  As  performed  in  its  entirety  at 
Bayreuth,  it  is  even  more  operatic  than  it  appears  at 
Covent  Garden,  because  it  happens  that  its  most  old- 
fashioned  features,  notably  some  of  the  big  set  con- 
certed pieces  for  principals  and  chorus  (pezzi  d' 
insieme  as  I  have  called  them  above),  are  harder  to 
perform  than  the  more  modern  and  characteristically 
Wagnerian  sections,  and  for  that  reason  were  cut 
out  in  preparing  the  abbreviated  fashionable  version. 
Thus  Lohengrin  came  upon  the  ordinary  operatic 
stage  as  a  more  advanced  departure  from  current 
operatic  models  than  its  composer  had  made  it.  Still, 
it  is  unmistakably  an  opera,  with  chorus,  concerted 
pieces,  grand  finales,  and  a  heroine  who,  if  she  does 
not  sing  florid  variations  with  flute  obbligato,  is  none 
the  less  a  very  perceptible  prima  donna.  In  every- 
thing but  musical  technique  the  change  from  Lohen- 
grin to  The  Rhine  Gold  is  quite  revolutionary. 

The  explanation  is  that  Night  Falls  On  The  Gods 
came  in  between  them,  although  its  music  was  not 
finished  until  twenty  years  after  that  of  The  Rhine 
Gold,  and  thus  belongs  to  a  later  and  more  masterful 
phase  of  Wagner's  harmonic  style.  It  first  came  into 


64  The  Perfect  Wagnerite       Act  in 

Wagner's  head  as  an  opera  to  be  entitled  Siegfried's 
Death,  founded  on  the  old  Niblung  Sagas,  which 
offered  to  Wagner  the  same  material  for  an  effective 
theatrical  tragedy  as  they  did  to  Ibsen.  Ibsen's 
Vikings  in  Helgeland  is,  in  kind,  what  Siegfried's 
Death  was  originally  intended  to  be:  that  is,  a  heroic 
piece  for  the  theatre,  without  the  metaphysical  or 
allegorical  complications  of  The  Ring.  Indeed,  the 
ultimate  catastrophe  of  the  Saga  cannot  by  any  per- 
version of  ingenuity  be  adapted  to  the  perfectly  clear 
allegorical  design  of  The  Rhine  Gold,  The  Valkyries, 
and  Siegfried. 


SIEGFRIED  AS  PROTESTANT 

THE  philosophically  fertile  element  in  the  original 
project  of  Siegfried's  Death  was  the  conception  of 
Siegfried  himself  as  a  type  of  the  healthy  man  raised 
to  perfect  confidence  in  his  own  impulses  by  an  in- 
tense and  joyous  vitality  which  is  above  fear,  sickliness 
of  conscience,  malice,  and  the  makeshifts  and  moral 
crutches  of  law  and  order  which  accompany  them. 
Such  a  character  appears  extraordinarily  fascinating 
and  exhilarating  to  our  guilty  and  conscience-ridden 
generations,  however  little  they  may  understand  him. 
The  world  has  always  delighted  in  the  man  who  is 
delivered  from  conscience.  From  Punch  and  Don 
Juan  down  to  Robert  Macaire,  Jeremy  Diddler  and 
the  pantomime  clown,  he  has  always  drawn  large 
audiences;  but  hitherto  he  has  been  decorously  given 
to  the  devil  at  the  end.  Indeed  eternal  punishment 
is  sometimes  deemed  too  high  a  compliment  to  his 
nature.  When  the  late  Lord  Lytton,  in  his  Strange 
Story,  introduced  a  character  personifying  the  joy- 
ousness  of  intense  vitality,  he  felt  bound  to  deny  him 
the  immortal  soul  which  was  at  that  time  conceded 
even  to  the  humblest  characters  in  fiction,  and  to 


66  The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

accept  mischievousness,  cruelty,  and  utter  incapacity 
for  sympathy  as  the  inevitable  consequence  of  his 
magnificent  bodily  and  mental  health. 

In  short,  though  men  felt  all  the  charm  of  abound- 
ing life  and  abandonment  to  its  impulses,  they  dared 
not,  in  their  deep  self-mistrust,  conceive  it  otherwise 
than  as  a  force  making  for  evil — one  which  must 
lead  to  universal  ruin  unless  checked  and  literally 
mortified  by  self-renunciation  in  obedience  to  super- 
human guidance,  or  at  least  to  some  reasoned  sys- 
tem of  morals.  When  it  became  apparent  to  the 
cleverest  of  them  that  no  such  superhuman  guidance 
existed,  and  that  their  secularist  systems  had  all  the 
fictitiousness  of  "revelation"  without  its  poetry,  there 
was  no  escaping  the  conclusion  that  all  the  good  that 
man  had  done  must  be  put  down  to  his  arbitrary  will 
as  well  as  all  the  evil  he  had  done;  and  it  was  also 
obvious  that  if  progress  were  a  reality,  his  beneficent 
impulses  must  be  gaining  on  his  destructive  ones.  It 
was  under  the  influence  of  these  ideas  that  we  began 
to  hear  about  the  joy  of  life  where  we  had  formerly 
heard  about  the  grace  of  God  or  the  Age  of  Reason, 
and  that  the  boldest  spirits  began  to  raise  the  question 
whether  churches  and  laws  and  the  like  were  not 
doing  a  great  deal  more  harm  than  good  by  their 
action  in  limiting  the  freedom  of  the  human  will. 
Four  hundred  years  ago,  when  belief  in  God  and  in  re- 
velation was  general  throughout  Europe,  a  similar 
wave  of  thought  led  the  strongest-hearted  peoples  to 
affirm  that  every  man's  private  judgment  was  a  more 
trustworthy  interpreter  of  God  and  revelation  than  the 


Siegfried  as  Protestant  67 

Church.  This  was  called  Protestantism;  and  though 
the  Protestants  were  not  strong  enough  for  their 
creed,  and  soon  set  up  a  Church  of  their  own,  yet  the 
movement,  on  the  whole,  has  justified  the  direction 
it  took.  Nowadays  the  supernatural  element  in 
Protestantism  has  perished;  and  if  every  man's 
private  judgment  is  still  to  be  justified  as  the  most 
trustworthy  interpreter  of  the  will  of  Humanity 
(which  is  not  a  more  extreme  proposition  than  the 
old  one  about  the  will  of  God)  Protestantism  must 
take  a  fresh  step  in  advance,  and  become  Anarchism. 
Which  it  has  accordingly  done,  Anarchism  being  one 
of  the  notable  new  creeds  of  the  eighteenth  and  nine- 
teenth centuries. 

The  weak  place  which  experience  finds  out  in  the 
Anarchist  theory  is  its  reliance  on  the  progress  already 
achieved  by  "  Man."  There  is  no  such  thing  as  Man 
in  the  world :  what  we  have  to  deal  with  is  a  multitude 
of  men,  some  of  them  great  rascals,  some  of  them  great 
statesmen,  others  both,  with  a  vast  majority  capable 
of  managing  their  personal  affairs,  but  not  of  compre- 
hending social  organization,  or  grappling  with  the 
problems  created  by  their  association  in  enormous 
numbers.  If  "Man"  means  this  majority,  then 
"Man"  has  made  no  progress:  he  has,  on  the  con- 
trary, resisted  it.  He  will  not  even  pay  the  cost  of 
existing  institutions:  the  requisite  money  has  to  be 
filched  from  him  by  "indirect  taxation."  Such 
people,  like  Wagner's  giants,  must  be  governed 
by  laws;  and  their  assent  to  such  government  must 
be  secured  by  deliberately  filling  them  with  pre- 


68  The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

judices  and  practising  on  their  imaginations  by 
pageantry  and  artificial  eminences  and  dignities. 
The  government  is  of  course  established  by  the  few 
who  are  capable  of  government,  though  its  mechan- 
ism once  complete,  it  may  be,  and  generally  is, 
carried  on  unintelligently  by  people  who  are  in- 
capable of  it,  the  capable  people  repairing  it  from 
time  to  time  when  it  gets  too  far  behind  the  continu- 
ous advance  or  decay  of  civilization.  All  these  capa- 
ble people  are  thus  in  the  position  of  Wotan,  forced  to 
maintain  as  sacred,  and  themselves  submit  to,  laws 
which  they  privately  know  to  be  obsolescent  make- 
shifts, and  to  affect  the  deepest  veneration  for  creeds 
and  ideals  which  they  ridicule  among  themselves  with 
cynical  scepticism.  No  individual  Siegfried  can  res- 
cue them  from  this  bondage  and  hypocrisy;  in  fact, 
the  individual  Siegfried  has  come  often  enough,  only 
to  find  himself  confronted  with  the  alternative  of 
governing  those  who  are  not  Siegfrieds  or  risking  des- 
truction at  their  hands.  And  this  dilemma  will  per- 
sist until  Wotan's  inspiration  comes  to  our  governors, 
and  they  see  that  their  business  is  not  the  devising  of 
laws  and  institutions  to  prop  up  the  weaknesses  of 
mobs  and  secure  the  survival  of  the  unfittest,  but  the 
breeding  of  men  whose  wills  and  intelligences  may  be 
depended  on  to  produce  spontaneously  the  social 
wellbeing  our  clumsy  laws  now  aim  at  and  miss.  The 
majority  of  men  at  present  in  Europe  have  no  busi- 
ness to  be  alive;  and  no  serious  progress  will  be  made 
until  we  address  ourselves  earnestly  and  scientifically 
to  the  task  of  producing  trustworthy  human  material 


Siegfried  as  Protestant  69 

for  society.  In  short,  it  is  necessary  to  breed  a  race 
of  men  in  whom  the  life-giving  impulses  predominate, 
before  the  New  Protestantism  becomes  politically 
practicable.1 

The  most  inevitable  dramatic  conception,  then,  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  is  that  of  a  perfectly  naive 
hero  upsetting  religion,  law  and  order  in  all  directions, 
and  establishing  in  their  place  the  unfettered  action  of 
Humanity  doing  exactly  what  it  likes,  and  producing 
order  instead  of  confusion  thereby  because  it  likes  to 
do  what  is  necessary  for  the  good  of  the  race.  This 
conception,  already  incipient  in  Adam  Smith's  Wealth 
of  Nations,  was  certain  at  last  to  reach  some  great 
artist,  and  be  embodied  by  him  in  a  masterpiece.  It 
was  also  certain  that  if  that  master  happened  to  be  a 
German,  he  should  take  delight  in  describing  his  hero 
as  the  Freewiller  of  Necessity,  thereby  beyond  meas- 
ure exasperating  Englishmen  with  a  congenital  in- 
capacity for  metaphysics. 

PANACEA  QUACKERY,  OTHERWISE  IDEALISM 

Unfortunately,  human  enlightenment  does  not  pro- 
gress by  nicer  and  nicer  adjustments,  but  by  violent 
corrective  reactions  which  invariably  send  us  clean 
over  our  saddle  and  would  bring  us  to  the  ground  on  the 
other  side  if  the  next  reaction  did  not  send  us  back 

1  The  necessity  for  breeding  the  governing  class  from  a  selected  stock  has 
always  been  recognized  by  Aristocrats,  however  erroneous  their  methods  of  selec- 
tion. We  have  changed  our  system  from  Aristocracy  to  Democracy  without 
considering  that  we  were  at  the  same  time  changing,  as  regards  our  governing 
class,  from  Selection  to  Promiscuity.  Those  who  have  taken  a  practical  part  in 
modern  politics  best  know  how  farcical  the  result  is. 


70  The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

again  with  equally  excessive  zeal.  Ecclesiasticism 
and  Constitutionalism  send  us  one  way,  Protestant- 
ism and  Anarchism  the  other;  Order  rescues  us  from 
confusion  and  lands  us  in  Tyranny;  Liberty  then 
saves  the  situation  and  is  presently  found  to  be  as 
great  a  nuisance  as  Despotism.  A  scientifically 
balanced  application  of  these  forces,  theoretically 
possible,  is  practically  incompatible  with  human 
passion.  Besides,  we  have  the  same  weakness  in 
morals  as  in  medicine:  we  cannot  be  cured  of  running 
after  panaceas,  or,  as  they  are  called  in  the  sphere  of 
morals,  ideals.  One  generation  sets  up  duty,  renun- 
ciation, self-sacrifice  as  a  panacea.  The  next  gen- 
eration, especially  the  women,  wake  up  at  the  age 
of  forty  or  thereabouts  to  the  fact  that  their  lives 
have  been  wasted  in  the  worship  of  this  ideal,  and, 
what  is  still  more  aggravating,  that  the  elders  who 
imposed  it  on  them  did  so  in  a  fit  of  satiety  with  their 
own  experiments  in  the  other  direction.  Then  that 
defrauded  generation  foams  at  the  mouth  at  the  very 
mention  of  duty,  and  sets  up  the  alternative  panacea 
of  love,  their  deprivation  of  which  seems  to  them  to 
have  been  the  most  cruel  and  mischievous  feature  of 
their  slavery  to  duty.  It  is  useless  to  warn  them  that 
this  reaction,  if  prescribed  as  a  panacea,  will  prove  as 
great  a  failure  as  all  the  other  reactions  have  done; 
for  they  do  not  recognize  its  identity  with  any  reaction 
that  ever  occurred  before.  Take  for  instance  the 
hackneyed  historic  example  of  the  austerity  of  the 
Commonwealth  being  followed  by  the  licence  of  the 
Restoration.  You  cannot  persuade  any  moral  en- 


Siegfried  as  Protestant  71 

thusiast  to  accept  this  as  a  pure  oscillation  from  action 
to  reaction.  If  he  is  a  Puritan  he  looks  upon  the 
Restoration  as  a  national  disaster:  if  he  is  an  artist 
he  regards  it  as  the  salvation  of  the  country  from 
gloom,  devil  worship  and  starvation  of  the  affections. 
The  Puritan  is  ready  to  try  the  Commonwealth  again 
with  a  few  modern  improvements:  the  Amateur  is 
equally  ready  to  try  the  Restoration  with  modern 
enlightenments.  And  so  for  the  present  we  must  be 
content  to  proceed  by  reactions,  hoping  that  each 
will  establish  some  permanently  practical  and  bene- 
ficial reform  or  moral  habit  that  will  survive  the 
correction  of  its  excesses  by  the  next  reaction. 

DRAMATIC   ORIGIN   OF  WOTAN 

We  can  now  see  how  a  single  drama  in  which  Wotan 
does  not  appear,  and  of  which  Siegfried  is  the  hero, 
expanded  itself  into  a  great  fourfold  drama  of  which 
Wotan  is  the  hero.  You  cannot  dramatize  a  reac- 
tion by  personifying  the  reacting  force  only,  any 
more  than  Archimedes  could  lift  the  world  without  a 
fulcrum  for  his  lever.  You  must  also  personify 
the  established  power  against  which  the  new  force 
is  reacting;  and  in  the  conflict  between  them  you  get 
your  drama,  conflict  being  the  essential  ingredient  in 
all  drama.  Siegfried,  as  the  hero  of  Die  Gotter- 
dammerung,  is  only  the  primo  tenore  robusto  of  an 
opera  book,  deferring  his  death,  after  he  has  been 
stabbed  in  the  last  act,  to  sing  rapturous  love  strains 
to  the  heroine  exactly  like  Edgardo  in  Donizetti's 


72  The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

Lucia.  In  order  to  make  him  intelligible  in  the 
wider  significance  which  his  joyous,  fearless,  con- 
scienceless heroism  soon  assumed  in  Wagner's  imagin- 
ation, it  was  necessary  to  provide  him  with  a  much 
vaster  dramatic  antagonist  than  the  operatic  villain 
Hagen.  Hence  Wagner  had  to  create  Wotan  as  the 
anvil  for  Siegfried's  hammer;  and  since  there  was  no 
room  for  Wotan  in  the  original  opera  book,  Wagner 
had  to  work  back  to  a  preliminary  drama  reaching 
primarily  to  the  very  beginnings  of  human  society. 
And  since,  on  this  world-embracing  scale,  it  was  clear 
that  Siegfried  must  come  into  conflict  with  many  baser 
and  stupider  forces  than  those  lofty  ones  of  super- 
natural religion  and  political  constitutionalism  typified 
by  Wotan  and  his  wife  Fricka,  these  minor  antagon- 
ists had  to  be  dramatized  also  in  the  persons  of  Alber- 
ic,  Mime,  Fafnir,  Loki,  and  the  rest.  None  of  these 
appear  in  Night  Falls  On  The  Gods  save  Alberic, 
whose  weird  dream-colloquy  with  Hagen,  effective 
as  it  is,  is  as  purely  theatrical  as  the  scene  of  the 
Ghost  in  Hamlet,  or  the  statue  in  Don  Giovanni. 
Cut  the  conference  of  the  Norns  and  the  visit  of 
Valtrauta  to  Brynhild  out  of  Night  Falls  On  The 
Gods,  and  the  drama  remains  coherent  and  com- 
plete without  them.  Retain  them,  and  the  play 
becomes  connected  by  conversational  references 
with  the  three  music  dramas;  but  the  connection 
establishes  no  philosophic  coherence,  no  real  identity 
between  the  operatic  Brynhild  of  the  Gibichung  epi- 
sode (presently  to  be  related)  and  the  daughter  of 
Wotan  and  the  First  Mother. 


Siegfried  as  Protestant  73 

THE  LOVE  PANACEA 

We  shall  now  find  that  at  the  point  where  The 
Ring  changes  from  music  drama  into  opera,  it  also 
ceases  to  be  philosophic,  and  becomes  didactic.  The 
philosophic  part  is  a  dramatic  symbol  of  the  world  as 
Wagner  observed  it.  In  the  didactic  part  the  philoso- 
phy degenerates  into  the  prescription  of  a  romantic 
nostrum  for  all  human  ills.  Wagner,  only  mortal 
after  all,  succumbed  to  the  panacea  mania  when  his 
philosophy  was  exhausted,  like  any  of  the  rest  of  us. 

The  panacea  is  by  no  means  an  original  one. 
Wagner  was  anticipated  in  the  year  1819  by  a  young 
country  gentleman  from  Sussex  named  Shelley,  in  a 
work  of  extraordinary  artistic  power  and  splendor. 
Prometheus  Unbound  is  an  English  attempt  at  a 
Ring;  and  when  it  is  taken  into  account  that  the 
author  was  only  27,  whereas  Wagner  was  40  when  he 
completed  the  poem  of  The  Ring,  our  vulgar  patriot- 
ism may  find  an  envious  satisfaction  in  insisting  upon 
the  comparison.  Both  works  set  forth  the  same  con- 
flict between  humanity  and  its  gods  and  governments, 
issuing  in  the  redemption  of  man  from  their  tyranny 
by  the  growth  of  his  will  into  perfect  strength  and 
self-confidence;  and  both  finish  by  a  lapse  into 
panacea-mongering  didacticism  by  the  holding  up  of 
Love  as  the  remedy  for  all  evils  and  the  solvent  of  all 
social  difficulties. 

The  differences  between  Prometheus  Unbound  and 
The  Ring  are  as  interesting  as  the  likenesses.  Shelley, 
caught  in  the  pugnacity  of  his  youth  and  the  first  im- 


74  The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

petuosity  of  his  prodigious  artistic  power  by  the  first 
fierce  attack  of  the  New  Reformation,  gave  no  quarter 
to  the  antagonist  of  his  hero.  His  Wotan,  whom  he 
calls  Jupiter,  is  the  almighty  fiend  into  whom  the 
Englishman's  God  had  degenerated  during  two  cen- 
turies of  ignorant  Bible  worship  and  shameless  com- 
mercialism. He  is  Alberic,  Fafnir,  Loki  and  the  am- 
bitious side  of  Wotan  all  rolled  into  one  melodramatic 
demon  who  is  finally  torn  from  his  throne  and  hurled 
shrieking  into  the  abyss  by  a  spirit  representing  that 
conception  of  Eternal  Law  which  has  been  replaced 
since  by  the  conception  of  Evolution.  Wagner,  an 
older,  more  experienced  man  than  the  Shelley  of  1819, 
understood  Wotan  and  pardoned  him,  separating  him 
tenderly  from  all  the  compromising  alliances  to  which 
Shelley  fiercely  held  him;  making  the  truth  and  hero- 
ism which  overthrow  him  the  children  of  his  inmost 
heart;  and  representing  him  as  finally  acquiescing  in 
and  working  for  his  own  supersession  and  annihila- 
tion. Shelley,  in  his  later  works,  is  seen  progressing 
towards  the  same  tolerance,  justice,  and  humility  of 
spirit,  as  he  advanced  towards  the  middle  age  he  never 
reached.  But  there  is  no  progress  from  Shelley  to 
Wagner  as  regards  the  panacea,  except  that  in 
Wagner  there  is  a  certain  shadow  of  night  and  death 
come  on  it:  nay,  even  a  clear  opinion  that  the  su- 
preme good  of  love  is  that  it  so  completely  satisfies 
the  desire  for  life,  that  after  it  the  Will  to  Live  ceases 
to  trouble  us,  and  we  are  at  last  content  to  achieve 
the  highest  happiness  of  death. 

This  reduction  of  the  panacea  to  absurdity  was  not 


Siegfried  as  Protestant  75 

forced  upon  Shelley,  because  the  love  which  acts  as  a 
universal  solvent  in  his  Prometheus  Unbound  is  a 
sentiment  of  affectionate  benevolence  which  has  noth- 
ing to  do  with  sexual  passion.  It  might,  and  in  fact 
does  exist  in  the  absence  of  any  sexual  interest 
whatever.  The  words  mercy  and  kindness  connote 
it  less  ambiguously  than  the  word  love.  But  Wagner 
sought  always  for  some  point  of  contact  between  his 
ideas  and  the  physical  senses,  so  that  people  might 
not  only  think  or  imagine  them  in  the  eighteenth 
century  fashion,  but  see  them  on  the  stage,  hear  them 
from  the  orchestra,  and  feel  them  through  the  infec- 
tion of  passionate  emotion.  Dr.  Johnson  kicking 
the  stone  to  confute  Berkeley  is  not  more  bent  on 
common-sense  concreteness  than  Wagner:  on  all 
occasions  he  insists  on  the  need  for  sensuous  appre- 
hension to  give  reality  to  abstract  comprehension, 
maintaining,  in  fact,  that  reality  has  no  other  meaning. 
Now  he  could  apply  this  process  to  poetic  love  only  by 
following  it  back  to  its  alleged  origin  in  sexual  passion, 
the  emotional  phenomena  of  which  he  has  expressed 
in  music  with  a  frankness  and  forcible  naturalism 
which  would  possibly  have  scandalized  Shelley.  The 
love  duet  in  the  first  act  of  The  Valkyries  is  brought  to 
a  point  at  which  the  conventions  of  our  society  de- 
mand the  precipitate  fall  of  the  curtain;  whilst  the 
prelude  to  Tristan  and  Isolde  is  such  an  astonishingly 
intense  and  faithful  translation  into  music  of  the 
emotions  which  accompany  the  union  of  a  pair  of 
lovers,  that  it  is  questionable  whether  the  great  popu- 
larity of  this  piece  at  our  orchestral  concerts  really 


76  The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

means  that  our  audiences  are  entirely  catholic  in 
their  respect  for  life  in  all  its  beneficently  creative 
functions,  or  whether  they  simply  enjoy  the  music 
without  understanding  it. 

But  however  offensive  and  inhuman  may  be  the 
superstition  which  brands  such  exaltations  of  natural 
passion  as  shameful  and  indecorous,  there  is  at  least 
as  much  common  sense  in  disparaging  love  as  in  set- 
ting it  up  as  a  panacea.  Even  the  mercy  and  loving- 
kindness  of  Shelley  do  not  hold  good  as  a  universal 
law  of  conduct:  Shelley  himself  makes  extremely 
short  work  of  Jupiter,  just  as  Siegfried  does  of  Fafnir, 
Mime,  and  Wotan;  and  the  fact  that  Prometheus  is 
saved  from  doing  the  destructive  part  of  his  work  by 
the  intervention  of  that  very  nebulous  personification 
of  Eternity  called  Demogorgon,  does  not  in  the  least 
save  the  situation,  because,  flatly,  there  is  no  such 
person  as  Demogorgon,  and  if  Prometheus  does  not 
pull  down  Jupiter  himself,  no  one  else  will.  It  would 
be  exasperating,  if  it  were  not  so  funny,  to  see  these 
poets  leading  their  heroes  through  blood  and  destruc- 
tion to  the  conclusion  that,  as  Browning's  David  puts 
it  (David  of  all  people!),  "All's  Love;  yet  all's  Law." 

Certainly  it  is  clear  enough  that  such  love  as  that 
implied  by  Siegfried's  first  taste  of  fear  as  he  cuts 
through  the  mailed  coat  of  the  sleeping  figure  on  the 
mountain,  and  discovers  that  it  is  a  woman;  by  her 
fierce  revolt  against  being  touched  by  him  when  his 
terror  gives  way  to  ardor;  by  his  manly  transports  of 
victory;  and  by  the  womanly  mixture  of  rapture  and 
horror  with  which  she  abandons  herself  to  the  passion 


Siegfried  as  Protestant  77 

which  has  seized  on  them  both,  is  an  experience  which 
it  is  much  better,  like  the  vast  majority  of  us,  never  to 
have  passed  through,  than  to  allow  it  to  play  more 
than  a  recreative  holiday  part  in  our  lives.  It  did  not 
play  a  very  large  part  in  Wagner's  own  laborious  life, 
and  does  not  occupy  more  than  two  scenes  of  The 
Ring.  Tristan  and  Isolde,  wholly  devoted  to  it,  is  a 
poem  of  destruction  and  death.  The  Mastersingers,  a 
work  full  of  health,  fun  and  happiness,  contains  not  a 
single  bar  of  love  music  that  can  be  described  as  pas- 
sionate: the  hero  of  it  is  a  widower  who  cobbles  shoes, 
writes  verses,  and  contents  himself  with  looking  on  at 
the  sweetheartings  of  his  customers.  Parsifal  makes 
an  end  of  it  altogether.  The  truth  is  that  the  love 
panacea  in  Night  Falls  On  The  Gods  and  in  the  last 
act  of  Siegfried  is  a  survival  of  the  first  crude  operatic 
conception  of  the  story,  modified  by  an  anticipation  of 
Wagner's  later,  though  not  latest,  conception  of  love 
as  the  fulfiller  of  our  Will  to  Live  and  consequently 
our  reconciler  to  night  and  death. 

NOT   LOVE,    BUT   LIFE 

The  only  faith  which  any  reasonable  disciple  can 
gain  from  The  Ring  is  not  in  love,  but  in  life  itself  as 
a  tireless  power  which  is  continually  driving  onward 
and  upward — not,  please  observe,  being  beckoned  or 
drawn  by  Das  Ewig  Weibliche  or  any  other  external 
sentimentality,  but  growing  from  within,  by  its  own 
inexplicable  energy,  into  ever  higher  and  higher  forms 
of  organization,  the  strengths  and  the  needs  of  which 


78  The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

are  continually  superseding  the  institutions  which 
were  made  to  fit  our  former  requirements.  When 
your  Bakoonins  call  out  for  the  demolition  of  all  these 
venerable  institutions,  there  is  no  need  to  fly  into  a 
panic  and  lock  them  up  in  prison  whilst  your  parlia- 
ment is  bit  by  bit  doing  exactly  what  they  advised 
you  to  do.  When  your  Siegfrieds  melt  down  the  old 
weapons  into  new  ones,  and  with  disrespectful  words 
chop  in  twain  the  antiquated  constable's  staves  in  the 
hands  of  their  elders,  the  end  of  the  world  is  no  nearer 
than  it  was  before.  If  human  nature,  which  is  the 
highest  organization  of  life  reached  on  this  planet,  is 
really  degenerating,  then  human  society  will  decay; 
and  no  panic-begotten  penal  measures  can  possibly 
save  it:  we  must,  like  Prometheus,  set  to  work  to 
make  new  men  instead  of  vainly  torturing  old  ones. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  the  energy  of  life  is  still  carrying 
human  nature  to  higher  and  higher  levels,  then  the 
more  young  people  shock  their  elders  and  deride  and 
discard  their  pet  institutions  the  better  for  the  hopes 
of  the  world,  since  the  apparent  growth  of  anarchy  is 
only  the  measure  of  the  rate  of  improvement.  His- 
tory, as  far  as  we  are  capable  of  history  (which  is  not 
saying  much  as  yet),  shows  that  all  changes  from 
crudity  of  social  organization  to  complexity,  and  from 
mechanical  agencies  in  government  to  living  ones, 
seem  anarchic  at  first  sight.  No  doubt  it  is  natural  to 
a  snail  to  think  that  any  evolution  which  threatens  to 
do  away  with  shells  will  result  in  general  death  from 
exposure.  Nevertheless,  the  most  elaborately  housed 
beings  today  are  born  not  only  without  houses  on 


Siegfried  as  Protestant  79 

their  backs  but  without  even  fur  or  feathers  to  clothe 
them. 


ANARCHISM  NO  PANACEA 

One  word  of  warning  to  those  who  may  find 
themselves  attracted  by  Siegfried's  Anarchism,  or,  if 
they  prefer  a  term  with  more  respectable  associations, 
his  neo-Protestantism.  Anarchism,  as  a  panacea,  is 
just  as  hopeless  as  any  other  panacea,  and  will  still 
be  so  even  if  we  breed  a  race  of  perfectly  benevolent 
men.  It  is  true  that  in  the  sphere  of  thought,  Anarch- 
ism is  an  inevitable  condition  of  progressive  evolution. 
A  nation  without  Freethinkers — that  is,  without  in- 
tellectual Anarchists — will  share  the  fate  of  China. 
It  is  also  true  that  our  criminal  law,  based  on  a  con- 
ception of  crime  and  punishment  which  is  nothing  but 
our  vindictiveness  and  cruelty  in  a  virtuous  disguise, 
is  an  unmitigated  and  abominable  nuisance,  bound  to 
be  beaten  out  of  us  finally  by  the  mere  weight  of  our 
experience  of  its  evil  and  uselessness.  But  it  will  not 
be  replaced  by  anarchy.  Applied  to  the  industrial  or 
political  machinery  of  modern  society,  anarchy  must 
always  reduce  itself  speedily  to  absurdity.  Even  the 
modified  form  of  anarchy  on  which  modern  civiliza- 
tion is  based:  that  is,  the  abandonment  of  industry, 
in  the  name  of  individual  liberty,  to  the  upshot  of 
competition  for  personal  gain  between  private  capi- 
talists, is  a  disastrous  failure,  and  is,  by  the  mere 
necessities  of  the  case,  giving  way  to  ordered  Socialism. 
For  the  economic  rationale  of  this,  I  must  refer  dis- 


80  The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

ciples  of  Siegfried  to  a  tract  from  my  hand  published 
by  the  Fabian  Society  and  entitled  The  Impossibilities 
of  Anarchism,  which  explains  why,  owing  to  the 
physical  constitution  of  our  globe,  society  cannot 
effectively  organize  the  production  of  its  food,  clothes 
and  housing,  nor  distribute  them  fairly  and  economi- 
cally on  any  anarchic  plan:  nay,  that  without  concert- 
ing our  social  action  to  a  much  higher  degree  than  we 
do  at  present  we  can  never  get  rid  of  the  wasteful  and 
iniquitous  welter  of  a  little  riches  and  a  great  deal  of 
poverty  which  current  political  humbug  calls  our 
prosperity  and  civilization.  Liberty  is  an  excellent 
thing;  but  it  cannot  begin  until  society  has  paid  its 
daily  debt  to  Nature  by  first  earning  its  living.  There 
is  no  liberty  before  that  except  the  liberty  to  live  at 
somebody  else's  expense,  a  liberty  much  sought  after 
nowadays,  since  it  is  the  criterion  of  gentility,  but  not 
wholesome  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  common  weal. 

SIEGFRIED  CONCLUDED 

In  returning  now  to  the  adventures  of  Siegfried 
there  is  little  more  to  be  described  except  the  finale  of 
an  opera.  Siegfried,  having  passed  unharmed  through 
the  fire,  wakes  Brynhild  and  goes  through  all  the 
fancies  and  ecstasies  of  love  at  first  sight  in  a  duet 
which  ends  with  an  apostrophe  to  "  leuchtende  Liebe, 
lachender  Tod!",  which  has  been  romantically 
translated  into  "Love  that  illumines,  laughing  at 
Death,"  whereas  it  really  identifies  enlightening  love 
and  laughing  death  as  involving  each  other  so  closely 
as  to  be  virtually  one  and  the  same  thing. 


NIGHT  FALLS  ON  THE  GODS 
PROLOGUE 

DIE  GOTTERDAMMERUNG  begins  with  an  elaborate 
prologue.  The  three  Norns  sit  in  the  night  on  Bryn- 
hild's  mountain  top  spinning  their  thread  of  destiny, 
and  telling  the  story  of  Wotan's  sacrifice  of  his  eye, 
and  of  his  breaking  off  a  bough  from  the  World  Ash  to 
make  a  haft  for  his  spear,  also  how  the  tree  withered 
after  suffering  that  violence.  They  have  also  some 
fresher  news  to  discuss.  Wotan,  on  the  breaking  of 
his  spear  by  Siegfried,  has  called  all  his  heroes  to  cut 
down  the  withered  World  Ash  and  stack  its  faggots 
in  a  mighty  pyre  about  Valhalla.  Then,  with  his 
broken  spear  in  his  hand,  he  has  seated  himself  in 
state  in  the  great  hall,  with  the  Gods  and  Heroes 
assembled  about  him  as  if  in  council,  solemnly 
waiting  for  the  end.  All  this  belongs  to  the  old 
legendary  materials  with  which  Wagner  began  The 
Ring. 

The  tale  is  broken  by  the  thread  snapping  in  the 
hands  of  the  third  Norn;  for  the  hour  has  arrived 
when  man  has  taken  his  destiny  in  his  own  hands  to 
shape  it  for  himself,  and  no  longer  bows  to  circum- 


82  The  Perfect  Wagnerite         Act  i 

stance,  environment,  necessity  (which  he  now  freely 
wills),  and  all  the  rest  of  the  inevitables.  So  the 
Norns  recognize  that  the  world  has  no  further  use  for 
them,  and  sink  into  the  earth  to  return  to  the  First 
Mother.  Then  the  day  dawns;  and  Siegfried  and 
Brynhild  come,  and  have  another  duet.  He  gives 
her  his  ring;  and  she  gives  him  her  horse.  Away 
then  he  goes  in  search  of  more  adventures;  and  she 
watches  him  from  her  crag  until  he  disappears.  The 
curtain  falls;  but  we  can  still  hear  the  trolling  of  his 
horn,  and  the  merry  clatter  of  his  horse's  shoes 
trotting  gaily  down  the  valley.  The  sound  is  lost 
in  the  grander  rhythm  of  the  Rhine  as  he  reaches 
its  banks.  We  hear  again  an  echo  of  the  lament 
of  the  Rhine  maidens  for  the  ravished  gold;  and  then, 
finally,  a  new  strain,  which  does  not  surge  like  the 
mighty  flood  of  the  river,  but  has  an  unmistakable 
tramp  of  hardy  men  and  a  strong  land  flavor  about 
it.  And  on  this  the  opera  curtain  at  last  goes  up — for 
please  remember  that  all  that  has  gone  before  is  only 
the  overture. 

The  First  Act 

We  now  understand  the  new  tramping  strain.  We 
are  in  the  Rhineside  hall  of  the  Gibichungs,  in  the 
presence  of  King  Gunther,  his  sister  Gutrune,  and 
Gunther's  grim  half  brother  Hagen,  the  villain  of  the 
piece.  Gunther  is  a  fool,  and  has  for  Hagen's  in- 
telligence the  respect  a  fool  always  has  for  the  brains 
of  a  scoundrel.  Feebly  fishing  for  compliments,  he 
appeals  to  Hagen  to  pronounce  him  a  fine  fellow  and  a 


Act  i         Night  Falls  On  The  Gods          83 

glory  to  the  race  of  Gibich.  Hagen  declares  that  it 
is  impossible  to  contemplate  him  without  envy,  but 
thinks  it  a  pity  that  he  has  not  yet  found  a  wife  glori- 
ous enough  for  him.  Gunther  doubts  whether  so 

O 

extraordinary  a  person  can  possibly  exist.  Hagen 
then  tells  him  of  Brynhild  and  her  rampart  of  fire;  also 
of  Siegfried.  Gunther  takes  this  rather  in  bad  part, 
since  not  only  is  he  afraid  of  the  fire,  but  Siegfried, 
according  to  Hagen,  is  not,  and  will  therefore  achieve 
this  desirable  match  himself.  But  Hagen  points  out 
that  since  Siegfried  is  riding  about  in  quest  of  adven- 
tures, he  will  certainly  pay  an  early  visit  to  the  re- 
nowned chief  of  the  Gibichungs.  They  can  then 
give  him  a  philtre  which  will  make  him  fall  in  love 
with  Gutrune  and  forget  every  other  woman  he  has 
yet  seen. 

Gunther  is  transported  with  admiration  of  Hagen's 
cunning  when  he  takes  in  this  plan;  and  he  has  hardly 
assented  to  it  when  Siegfried,  with  operatic  opportune- 
ness, drops  in  just  as  Hagen  expected,  and  is  duly 
drugged  into  the  heartiest  love  for  Gutrune  and  total 
oblivion  of  Brynhild  and  his  own  past.  When  Gun- 
ther declares  his  longing  for  the  bride  who  lies  inacces- 
sible within  a  palisade  of  flame,  Siegfried  at  once 
offers  to  undertake  the  adventure  for  him.  Hagen 
then  explains  to  both  of  them  that  Siegfried  can,  after 
braving  the  fire,  appear  to  Brynhild  in  the  semblance 
of  Gunther  through  the  magic  of  the  wishing  cap  (or 
Tarnhelm,  as  it  is  called  throughout  The  Ring),  the 
use  of  which  Siegfried  now  learns  for  the  first  time. 
It  is  of  course  part  of  the  bargain  that  Gunther  shall 


84  The  Perfect  Wagnerite          Act  i 

give  his  sister  to  Siegfried  in  marriage.  On  that  they 
swear  blood-brotherhood;  and  at  this  opportunity 
the  old  operatic  leaven  breaks  out  amusingly  in 
Wagner.  With  tremendous  exordium  of  brass,  the 
tenor  and  baritone  go  at  it  with  a  will,  showing  off 
the  power  of  their  voices,  following  each  other  in 
canonic  imitation,  singing  together  in  thirds  and 
sixths,  and  finishing  with  a  lurid  unison,  quite  in  the 
manner  of  Ruy  Gomez  and  Ernani,  or  Othello  and 
lago.  Then  without  further  ado  Siegfried  departs  on 
his  expedition,  taking  Gunther  with  him  to  the  foot  of 
the  mountain,  and  leaving  Hagen  to  guard  the  hall 
and  sing  a  very  fine  solo  which  has  often  figured  in  the 
programs  of  the  Richter  concerts,  explaining  that 
his  interest  in  the  affair  is  that  Siegfried  will  bring 
back  the  Ring,  and  that  he,  Hagen,  will  presently 
contrive  to  possess  himself  of  that  Ring  and  become 
Plutonic  master  of  the  world. 

And  now  it  will  be  asked  how  does  Hagen  know 
all  about  the  Plutonic  empire;  and  why  was  he  able 
to  tell  Gunther  about  Brynhild  and  Siegfried,  and  to 
explain  to  Siegfried  the  trick  of  the  Tarnhelm.  The 
explanation  is  that  though  Hagen's  mother  was  the 
mother  of  Gunther,  his  father  was  not  the  illustrious 
Gibich,  but  no  less  a  person  than  our  old  friend  Alber- 
ic,  who,  like  Wotan,  has  begotten  a  son  to  do  for  him 
what  he  cannot  do  for  himself. 

In  the  above  incidents,  those  gentle  moralizers  who 
find  the  serious  philosophy  of  the  music  dramas  too 
terrifying  for  them,  may  allegorize  pleasingly  on  the 
philtre  as  the  maddening  chalice  of  passion  which, 


Act  i         Night  Falls  On  The  Gods          85 

once  tasted,  causes  the  respectable  man  to  forget 
his  lawfully  wedded  wife  and  plunge  into  ad- 
ventures which  eventually  lead  him  headlong  to 
destruction. 

We  now  come  upon  a  last  relic  of  the  tragedy 
of  Wotan.  Returning  to  Brynhild's  mountain,  we  find 
her  visited  by  her  sister  Valkyrie  Valtrauta,  who  has 
witnessed  Wotan's  solemn  preparations  with  terror. 
She  repeats  to  Brynhild  the  account  already  given  by 
the  Norns.  Clinging  in  anguish  to  Wotan's  knees, 
she  has  heard  him  mutter  that  were  the  ring  returned 
to  the  daughters  of  the  deep  Rhine,  both  Gods  and 
world  would  be  redeemed  from  that  stage  curse  of 
Alberic's  in  The  Rhine  Gold.  On  this  she  has  rushed 
on  her  warhorse  through  the  air  to  beg  Brynhild  to 
give  the  Rhine  back  its  ring.  But  this  is  asking 
Woman  to  give  up  love  for  the  sake  of  Church  and 
State.  She  declares  that  she  will  see  them  both 
perish  first;  and  Valtrauta  returns  to  Valhalla  in 
despair.  Whilst  Brynhild  is  watching  the  course  of 
the  black  thundercloud  that  marks  her  sister's  flight, 
the  fires  of  Loki  again  flame  high  round  the  moun- 
tain; and  the  horn  of  Siegfried  is  heard  as  he  makes 
his  way  through  them.  But  the  man  who  now 
appears  wears  the  Tarnhelm:  his  voice  is  a  strange 
voice:  his  figure  is  the  unknown  one  of  the  king  of 
the  Gibichungs.  He  tears  the  ring  from  her  finger, 
and,  claiming  her  as  his  wife,  drives  her  into  the  cave 
without  pity  for  her  agony  of  horror,  and  sets  Nothung 
between  them  in  token  of  his  loyalty  to  the  friend 
he  is  impersonating.  No  explanation  of  this  high- 


86  The  Perfect  Wagnerite        Act  n 

way    robbery  of  the  ring  is  offered.     Clearly,  this 
Siegfried  is  not  the  Siegfried  of  the  previous  drama. 

The  Second  Act 

In  the  second  act  we  return  to  the  hall  of  Gibich, 
where  Hagen,  in  the  last  hours  of  that  night,  still  sits, 
his  spear  in  his  hand,  and  his  shield  beside  him.  At 
his  knees  crouches  a  dwarfish  spectre,  his  father 
Alberic,  still  full  of  his  old  grievances  against  Wotan, 
and  urging  his  son  in  his  dreams  to  win  back  the 
ring  for  him.  This  Hagen  swears  to  do;  and  as  the 
apparition  of  his  father  vanishes,  the  sun  rises  and 
Siegfried  suddenly  comes  from  the  river  bank  tucking 
into  his  belt  the  Tarnhelm,  which  has  transported  him 
from  the  mountain  like  the  enchanted  carpet  of 
the  Arabian  tales.  He  describes  his  adventures  to 
Gutrune  until  Gunther' s  boat  is  seen  approaching, 
when  Hagen  seizes  a  cowhorn  and  calls  the  tribesmen 
to  welcome  their  chief  and  his  bride.  It  is  most 
exhilarating,  this  colloquy  with  the  startled  and 
hastily  armed  clan,  ending  with  a  thundering  chorus, 
the  drums  marking  the  time  with  mighty  pulses  from 
dominant  to  tonic,  much  as  Rossini  would  have  made 
them  do  if  he  had  been  a  pupil  of  Beethoven's. 

A  terrible  scene  follows.  Gunther  leads  his  captive 
bride  straight  into  the  presence  of  Siegfried,  whom 
she  claims  as  her  husband  by  the  ring,  which  she  is 
astonished  to  see  on  his  finger:  Gunther,  as  she 
supposes,  having  torn  it  from  her  the  night  before. 
Turning  on  Gunther,  she  says  "  Since  you  took  that 


Act  ii       Night  Falls  OnThe  Gods          87 

ring  from  me,  and  married  me  with  it,  tell  him  of 
your  right  to  it;  and  make  him  give  it  back  to  you." 
Gunther  stammers,  "The  ring!  I  gave  him  no  ring — 
er — do  you  know  him?"  The  rejoinder  is  obvious. 
"Then  where  are  you  hiding  the  ring  that  you  had 
from  me?"  Gunther's  confusion  enlightens  her;  and 
she  calls  Siegfried  trickster  and  thief  to  his  face.  In 
vain  he  declares  that  he  got  the  ring  from  no  woman, 
but  from  a  dragon  whom  he  slew;  for  he  is  manifestly 
puzzled;  and  she,  seizing  her  opportunity,  accuses 
him  before  the  clan  of  having  played  Gunther  false 
with  her. 

Hereupon  we  have  another  grandiose  operatic  oath, 
Siegfried  attesting  his  innocence  on  Hagen's  spear, 
and  Brynhild  rushing  to  the  footlights  and  thrusting 
him  aside  to  attest  his  guilt,  whilst  the  clansmen  call 
upon  their  gods  to  send  down  lightnings  and  silence 
the  perjured.  The  gods  do  not  respond;  and  Sieg- 
fried, after  whispering  to  Gunther  that  the  Tarnhelm 
seems  to  have  been  only  half  effectual  after  all,  laughs 
his  way  out  of  the  general  embarrassment  and  goes  off 
merrily  to  prepare  for  his  wedding,  with  his  arm 
round  Gutrune's  waist,  followed  by  the  clan.  Gunth- 
er, Hagen  and  Brynhild  are  left  together  to  plot 
operatic  vengeance.  Brynhild,  it  appears,  has  en- 
chanted Siegfried  in  such  a  fashion  that  no  weapon 
can  hurt  him.  She  has,  however,  omitted  to  pro- 
tect his  back,  since  it  is  impossible  that  he  should  ever 
turn  that  to  a  foe.  They  agree  accordingly  that  on  the 
morrow  a  great  hunt  shall  take  place,  at  which  Hagen 
shall  thrust  his  spear  into  the  hero's  vulnerable  back. 


88  The  Perfect  Wagnerite         Act  n 

The  blame  is  to  be  laid  on  the  tusk  of  a  wild  boar. 
Gunther,  being  a  fool,  is  remorseful  about  his  oath  of 
blood-brotherhood  and  about  his  sister's  bereavement, 
without  having  the  strength  of  mind  to  prevent  the 
murder.  The  three  burst  into  a  herculean  trio,  simi- 
lar in  conception  to  that  of  the  three  conspirators 
in  Un  Ballo  in  Maschera;  and  the  act  concludes  with 
a  joyous  strain  heralding  the  appearance  of  Siegfried's 
wedding  procession,  with  strewing  of  flowers,  sac- 
rificing to  the  gods,  and  carrying  bride  and  bride- 
groom in  triumph. 

It  will  be  seen  that  in  this  act  we  have  lost  all  con- 
nection with  the  earlier  drama.  Brynhild  is  not  only 
not  the  Brynhild  of  The  Valkyries,  she  is  the  Hiordis 
of  Ibsen,  a  majestically  savage  woman,  in  whom 
jealousy  and  revenge  are  intensified  to  heroic  pro- 
portions. That  is  the  inevitable  theatrical  treatment 
of  the  murderous  heroine  of  the  Saga.  Ibsen's  aim  in 
The  Vikings  was  purely  theatrical,  and  not,  as  in  his 
later  dramas,  also  philosophically  symbolic.  Wag- 
ner's aim  in  Siegfried's  Death  was  equally  theatrical, 
and  not,  as  it  afterwards  became  in  the  dramas  of 
which  Siegfried's  antagonist  Wotan  is  the  hero,  like- 
wise philosophically  symbolic.  The  two  master- 
dramatists  therefore  produce  practically  the  same 
version  of  Brynhild.  Thus  on  the  second  evening  of 
The  Ring  we  see  Brynhild  in  the  character  of  the 
truth-divining  instinct  in  religion,  cast  into  an  enchant- 
ed slumber  and  surrounded  by  the  fires  of  hell  lest 
she  should  overthrow  a  Church  corrupted  by  its 
alliance  with  government.  On  the  fourth  evening, 


Act  ii        Night  Falls  On  The  Gods  89 

we  find  her  swearing  a  malicious  lie  to  gratify  her 
personal  jealousy,  and  then  plotting  a  treacherous 
murder  with  a  fool  and  a  scoundrel.  In  the  original 
draft  of  Siegfried's  Death,  the  incongruity  is  carried 
still  further  by  the  conclusion,  at  which  the  dead  Bryn- 
hild,  restored  to  her  godhead  by  Wotan,  and  again 
a  Valkyrie,  carries  the  slain  Siegfried  to  Valhalla  to 
live  there  happily  ever  after  with  its  pious  heroes. 
As  to  Siegfried  himself,  he  talks  of  women,  both  in 
this  second  act  and  the  next,  with  the  air  of  a  man  of 
the  world.  "Their  tantrums,"  he  says,  "are  soon 
over."  Such  speeches  do  not  belong  to  the  novice 
of  the  preceding  drama,  but  to  the  original  Siegfried's 
Tod,  with  its  leading  characters  sketched  on  the 
ordinary  romantic  lines  from  the  old  Sagas,  and  not 
yet  reminted  as  the  original  creations  of  Wagner's 
genius  whose  acquaintance  we  have  made  on  the 
two  previous  evenings.  The  very  title  "Siegfried's 
Death"  survives  as  a  strong  theatrical  point  in  the 
following  passage.  Gunther,  in  his  rage  and  despair, 
cries,  "Save  me,  Hagen:  save  my  honor  and  thy 
mother's  who  bore  us  both."  "Nothing  can  save 
thee,"  replies  Hagen:  "neither  brain  nor  hand,  but 
Siegfried's  Death"  And  Gunther  echoes  with  a 
shudder,  "Siegfried's  Death!" 

A    WAGNERIAN    NEWSPAPER    CONTROVERSY 

The  devotion  which  Wagner's  work  inspires  has 
been  illustrated  lately  in  a  public  correspondence  on 
this  very  point.  A  writer  in  The  Daily  Telegraph 
having  commented  on  the  falsehood  uttered  by  Bryn- 


90  The  Perfect  Wagnerite        Act  11 

hild  in  accusing  Siegfried  of  having  betrayed  Gunther 
with  her,  a  correspondence  in  defence  of  the  beloved 
heroine  was  opened  in  The  Daily  Chronicle.  The  im- 
putation of  falsehood  to  Brynhild  was  strongly  re- 
sented and  combated,  in  spite  of  the  unanswerable 
evidence  of  the  text.  It  was  contended  that  Bryn- 
hild's  statement  must  be  taken  as  establishing  the 
fact  that  she  actually  was  ravished  by  somebody 
whom  she  believed  to  be  Siegfried,  and  that  since  this 
somebody  cannot  have  been  Siegfried,  he  being  as  in- 
capable of  treachery  to  Gunther  as  she  of  falsehood,  it 
must  have  been  Gunther  himself  after  a  second  ex- 
change of  personalities  not  mentioned  in  the  text. 
The  reply  to  this — if  so  obviously  desperate  a  hypo- 
thesis needs  a  reply — is  that  the  text  is  perfectly  ex- 
plicit as  to  Siegfried,  disguised  as  Gunther,  passing 
the  night  with  Brynhild  with  Nothung  dividing  them, 
and  in  the  morning  bringing  her  down  the  mountain 
through  the  fire  (an  impassable  obstacle  to  Gunther) 
and  there  transporting  himself  in  a  single  breath,  by 
the  Tarnhelm's  magic,  back  to  the  hall  of  the  Gibi- 
chungs,  leaving  the  real  Gunther  to  bring  Bryn- 
hild down  the  river  after  him.  One  controversialist 
actually  pleaded  for  the  expedition  occupying  two 
nights,  on  the  second  of  which  the  alleged  outrage 
might  have  taken  place.  But  the  time  is  accounted 
for  to  the  last  minute:  it  all  takes  place  during  the 
single  night  watch  of  Hagen.  There  is  no  possible 
way  out  of  the  plain  fact  that  Brynhild's  accusation  is 
to  her  own  knowledge  false;  and  the  impossible  ways 
just  cited  are  only  interesting  as  examples  of  the  fan- 


Act  ii       Night  Falls  On  The  Gods          9 1 

atical  worship  which  Wagner  and  his  creations  have 
been  able  to  inspire  in  minds  of  exceptional  power  and 
culture. 

More  plausible  was  the  line  taken  by  those  who 
admitted  the  falsehood.  Their  contention  was  that 
when  Wotan  deprived  Brynhild  of  her  Godhead,  he 
also  deprived  her  of  her  former  high  moral  attributes; 
so  that  Siegfried's  kiss  awakened  an  ordinary  mortal 
jealous  woman.  But  a  goddess  can  become  mortal 
and  jealous  without  plunging  at  once  into  perjury 
and  murder.  Besides,  this  explanation  involves  the 
sacrifice  of  the  whole  significance  of  the  allegory,  and 
the  reduction  of  The  Ring  to  the  plane  of  a  child's 
conception  of  The  Sleeping  Beauty.  Whoever  does 
not  understand  that,  in  terms  of  The  Ring  philosophy, 
a  change  from  godhead  to  humanity  is  a  step  higher 
and  not  a  degradation,  misses  the  whole  point  of  The 
Ring.  It  is  precisely  because  the  truthfulness  of 
Brynhild  is  proof  against  Wotan's  spells  that  he  has 
to  contrive  the  fire  palisade  with  Loki,  to  protect  the 
fictions  and  conventions  of  Valhalla  against  her. 

The  only  tolerable  view  is  the  one  supported  by 
the  known  history  of  The  Ring,  and  also,  for  music- 
ians of  sufficiently  fine  judgment,  by  the  evidence  of 
the  scores;  of  which  more  anon.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
Wagner  began,  as  I  have  said,  with  Siegfried's  Death. 
Then,  wanting  to  develop  the  idea  of  Siegfried  as  neo- 
Protestant,  he  went  on  to  The  Young  Siegfried.  As  a 
Protestant  cannot  be  dramatically  projected  without  a 
pontifical  antagonist.  The  Young  Siegfried  led  to 
The  Valkyries,  and  that  again  to  its  preface  The  Rhine 


92  The  Perfect  Wagnerite         Act  n 

Gold  (the  preface  is  always  written  after  the  book  is 
finished).  Finally,  of  course,  the  whole  was  revised. 
The  revision,  if  carried  out  strictly,  would  have  in- 
volved the  cutting  out  of  Siegfried's  Death,  now  be- 
come inconsistent  and  superfluous;  and  that  would 
have  involved,  in  turn,  the  facing  of  the  fact  that  The 
Ring  was  no  longer  a  Niblung  epic,  and  really  de- 
manded modern  costumes,  tall  hats  for  Tarnhelms, 
factories  for  Nibelheims,  villas  for  Valhallas,  and  so 
on — in  short,  a  complete  confession  of  the  extent  to 
which  the  old  Niblung  epic  had  become  the  merest 
pretext  and  name  directory  in  the  course  of  Wagner's 
travail.  But,  as  Wagner's  most  eminent  English 
interpreter  once  put  it  to  me  at  Bayreuth  between  the 
acts  of  Night  Falls  On  The  Gods,  the  master  wanted 
to  "  Lohengrinize "  again  after  his  long  abstention 
from  opera;  and  Siegfried's  Death  (first  sketched  in 
1848,  the  year  before  the  rising  in  Dresden  and 
the  subsequent  events  which  so  deepened  Wagner's 
sense  of  life  and  the  seriousness  of  art)  gave  him 
exactly  the  libretto  he  required  for  that  outbreak  of 
the  old  operatic  Adam  in  him.  So  he  changed  it  into 
Die  Gotterdammerung,  retaining  the  traditional  plot 
of  murder  and  jealousy,  and  with  it,  necessarily,  his 
original  second  act,  in  spite  of  the  incongruity  of  its 
Siegfried  and  Brynhild  with  the  Siegfried  and  Bryn- 
hild  of  the  allegory.  As  to  the  legendary  matter 
about  the  world-ash  and  the  destruction  of  Valhalla 
by  Loki,  it  fitted  in  well  enough;  for  though,  allegori- 
cally,  the  blow  by  which  Siegfried  breaks  the  god's 
spear  is  the  end  of  Wotan  and  of  Valhalla,  those  who 


Act  in     Night  Falls  On  The  Gods         93 

do  not  see  the  allegory,  and  take  the  story  literally, 
like  children,  are  sure  to  ask  what  becomes  of  Wotan 
after  Siegfried  gets  past  him  up  the  mountain;  and  to 
this  question  the  old  tale  told  in  Night  Falls  On  The 
Gods  is  as  good  an  answer  as  another.  The  very 
senselessness  of  the  scenes  of  the  Norns  and  of 
Valtrauta  in  relation  to  the  three  foregoing  dramas, 
gives  them  a  highly  effective  air  of  mystery;  and  no 
one  ventures  to  challenge  their  consequentiality,  be- 
cause we  are  all  more  apt  to  pretend  to  understand  great 
works  of  art  than  to  confess  that  the  meaning  (if  any) 
has  escaped  us.  Valtrauta,  however,  betrays  her  ir- 
relevance by  explaining  that  the  gods  can  be  saved 
by  the  restoration  of  the  ring  to  the  Rhine  maidens. 
This,  considered  as  part  of  the  previous  allegory,  is 
nonsense;  so  that  even  this  scene,  which  has  a  more 
plausible  air  of  organic  connection  with  The  Val- 
kyries than  any  other  in  Night  Falls  On  The  Gods,  is 
as  clearly  part  of  a  different  and  earlier  conception  as 
the  episode  which  concludes  it,  in  which  Siegfried 
actually  robs  Brynhild  of  her  ring,  though  he  has  no 
recollection  of  having  given  it  to  her.  Night  Falls  On 
The  Gods,  in  fact,  was  not  even  revised  into  any  real 
coherence  with  the  world-poem  which  sprang  from  it; 
and  that  is  the  authentic  solution  of  all  the  contro- 
versies which  have  arisen  over  it. 

The  Third  Act 

The  hunting  party  comes  off  duly.     Siegfried  strays 
from  it  and  meets  the  Rhine  maidens,  who  almost 


94  The  Perfect  Wagnerite        Actin 

succeed  in  coaxing  the  ring  from  him.  He  pretends 
to  be  afraid  of  his  wife;  and  they  chaff  him  as  to  her 
beating  him  and  so  forth;  but  when  they  add  that  the 
ring  is  accursed  and  will  bring  death  upon  him,  he 
discloses  to  them,  as  unconsciously  as  Julius  Caesar 
disclosed  it  long  ago,  that  secret  of  heroism,  never  to 
let  your  life  be  shaped  by  fear  of  its  end.1  So  he  keeps 
the  ring;  and  they  leave  him  to  his  fate.  The  hunting 
party  now  finds  him;  and  they  all  sit  down  together  to 
make  a  meal  by  the  river  side,  Siegfried  telling  them 
meanwhile  the  story  of  his  adventures.  When  he 
approaches  the  subject  of  Brynhild,  as  to  whom  his 
memory  is  a  blank,  Hagen  pours  an  antidote  to  the 
love  philtre  into  his  drinking  horn,  whereupon,  his 
memory  returning,  he  proceeds  to  narrate  the  inci- 
dent of  the  fiery  mountain,  to  Gunther's  intense 
mortification.  Hagen  then  plunges  his  spear  into  the 
back  of  Siegfried,  who  falls  dead  on  his  shield,  but 
gets  up  again,  after  the  old  operatic  custom,  to  sing 
about  thirty  bars  to  his  love  before  allowing  himself 
to  be  finally  carried  off  to  the  strains  of  the  famous 
Trauermarsch. 

The  scene  then  changes  to  the  hall  of  the  Gibichungs 
by  the  Rhine.  It  is  night;  and  Gutrune,  unable  to 
sleep,  and  haunted  by  all  sorts  of  vague  terrors,  is 
waiting  for  the  return  of  her  husband,  and  wondering 

1  "We  must  learn  to  die,  and  to  die  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  word.  The  fear 
of  the  end  is  the  source  of  all  lovelessness;  and  this  fear  is  generated  only  when 
love  begins  to  wane.  How  came  it  that  this  love,  the  highest  blessedness  to  all 
things  living,  was  so  far  lost  sight  of  by  the  human  race  that  at  last  it  came  to 
this:  all  that  mankind  did,  ordered,  and  established,  was  conceived  only  in  fear  of  the 
end  ?  My  poem  sets  this  forth." — Wagner  to  Roeckel,  25th  Jan.  1854. 


Act  in     Night  Falls  On  The  Gods         95 

whether  a  ghostly  figure  she  has  seen  gliding  down  to 
the  river  bank  is  Brynhild,  whose  room  is  empty. 
Then  comes  the  cry  of  Hagen,  returning  with  the 
hunting  party  to  announce  the  death  of  Siegfried  by 
the  tusk  of  a  wild  boar.  But  Gutrune  divines  the 
truth;  and  Hagen  does  not  deny  it.  Siegfried's 
body  is  brought  in;  Gunther  claims  the  ring;  Hagen 
will  not  suffer  him  to  take  it;  they  fight;  and  Gunther 
is  slain.  Hagen  then  attempts  to  take  it;  but  the 
dead  man's  hand  closes  on  it  and  raises  itself  threat- 
eningly. Then  Brynhild  comes;  and  a  funeral  pyre 
is  raised  whilst  she  declaims  a  prolonged  scena, 
extremely  moving  and  imposing,  but  yielding  nothing 
to  resolute  intellectual  criticism  except  a  very  power- 
ful and  elevated  exploitation  of  theatrical  pathos, 
psychologically  identical  with  the  scene  of  Cleopatra 
and  the  dead  Antony  in  Shakespeare's  tragedy.  Fi- 
nally she  flings  a  torch  into  the  pyre,  and  rides  her 
war-horse  into  the  flames.  The  hall  of  the  Gibi- 
chungs  catches  fire,  as  most  halls  would  were  a 
cremation  attempted  in  the  middle  of  the  floor  (I 
permit  myself  this  gibe  purposely  to  emphasize  the 
excessive  artificiality  of  the  scene);  but  the  Rhine 
overflows  its  banks  to  allow  the  three  Rhine  maidens 
to  take  the  ring  from  Siegfried's  finger,  incidentally 
extinguishing  the  conflagration  as  it  does  so.  Hagen 
attempts  to  snatch  the  ring  from  the  maidens,  who 
promptly  drown  him;  and  in  the  distant  heavens 
the  Gods  and  their  castle  are  seen  perishing  in  the 
fires  of  Loki  as  the  curtain  falls. 


96  The  Perfect  Wagnerite        Act  in 

FORGOTTEN    ERE    FINISHED 

In  all  this,  it  will  be  observed,  there  is  nothing  new. 
The  musical  fabric  is  enormously  elaborate  and  gorge- 
ous; but  you  cannot  say,  as  you  must  in  witnessing 
The  Rhine  Gold,  The  Valkyries,  and  the  first  two 
acts  of  Siegfried,  that  you  have  never  seen  any- 
thing like  it  before,  and  that  the  inspiration  is  entirely 
original.  Not  only  the  action,  but  most  of  the  poetry, 
might  conceivably  belong  to  an  Elizabethan  drama. 
The  situation  of  Cleopatra  and  Antony  is  unconscious- 
ly reproduced  without  being  bettered,  or  even  equalled 
in  point  of  majesty  and  musical  expression.  The  loss 
of  all  simplicity  and  dignity,  the  impossibility  of  any 
credible  scenic  presentation  of  the  incidents,  and  the 
extreme  staginess  of  the  conventions  by  which  these 
impossibilities  are  got  over,  are  no  doubt  covered  from 
the  popular  eye  by  the  overwhelming  prestige  of  Die 
Gotterdammerung  as  part  of  so  great  a  work  as  The 
Ring,  and  by  the  extraordinary  storm  of  emotion  and 
excitement  which  the  music  keeps  up.  But  the  very 
qualities  that  intoxicate  the  novice  in  music  enlighten 
the  adept.  In  spite  of  the  fulness  of  the  composer's 
technical  accomplishment,  the  finished  style  and  effort- 
less mastery  of  harmony  and  instrumentation  dis- 
played, there  is  not  a  bar  in  the  work  which  moves  us 
as  the  same  themes  moved  us  in  The  Valkyries,  nor 
is  anything  but  external  splendor  added  to  the  life 
and  humor  of  Siegfried. 

In  the  original  poem,  Brynhild  delays  her  self- 
immolation  on  the  pyre  of  Siegfried  to  read  the 


Act  in      Night  Falls  On  The  Gods         97 

assembled  choristers  a  homily  on  the  efficacy  of  the 
Love  panacea.  "My  holiest  wisdom's  hoard,"  she 
says,  "  now  I  make  known  to  the  world.  I  believe  not 
in  property,  nor  money,  nor  godliness,  nor  hearth  and 
high  place,  nor  pomp  and  peerage,  nor  contract  and 
custom,  but  in  Love.  Let  that  only  prevail;  and  ye 
shall  be  blest  in  weal  or  woe."  Here  the  repudiations 
still  smack  of  Bakoonin;  but  the  saviour  is  no  longer 
the  volition  of  the  full-grown  spirit  of  Man,  the  Free 
Wilier  of  Necessity,  sword  in  hand,  but  simply  Love, 
and  not  even  Shelleyan  love,  but  vehement  sexual 
passion.  It  is  highly  significant  of  the  extent  to  which 
this  uxorious  commonplace  lost  its  hold  of  Wagner 
(after  disturbing  his  conscience,  as  he  confesses  to 
Roeckel,  for  years)  that  it  disappears  in  the  full  score 
of  Night  Falls  On  The  Gods,  which  was  not  completed 
until  he  was  on  the  verge  of  producing  Parsifal,  twenty 
years  after  the  publication  of  the  poem.  He  cut  the 
homily  out,  and  composed  the  music  of  the  final 
scene  with  a  flagrant  recklessness  of  the  old  intention. 
The  rigorous  logic  with  which  representative  musi- 
cal themes  are  employed  in  the  earlier  dramas  is  here 
abandoned  without  scruple;  and  for  the  main  theme 
at  the  conclusion  he  selects  a  rapturous  passage  sung 
by  Sieglinda  in  the  third  act  of  The  Valkyries 
(p.  43,  ante)  when  Brynhild  inspires  her  with  a 
sense  of  her  high  destiny  as  the  mother  of  the  unborn 
hero.  There  is  no  dramatic  logic  whatever  in  the 
recurrence  of  this  theme  to  express  the  transport 
in  which  Brynhild  immolates  herself.  There  is  of 
course  an  excuse  for  it,  inasmuch  as  both  women 


98  The  Perfect  Wagnerite        Act  HI 

have  an  impulse  of  self-sacrifice  for  the  sake  of 
Siegfried;  but  this  is  really  hardly  more  than  an 
excuse;  since  the  Valhalla  theme  might  be  attached 
to  Alberic  on  the  no  worse  ground  that  both 
he  and  Wotan  are  inspired  by  ambition,  and  that 
the  ambition  has  the  same  object,  the  possession 
of  the  ring.  The  common  sense  of  the  matter  is 
that  the  only  themes  which  had  fully  retained  their 
significance  in  Wagner's  memory  at  the  period 
of  the  composition  of  Night  Falls  On  The  Gods 
are  those  which  are  mere  labels  of  external  feat- 
ures, such  as  the  Dragon,  the  Fire,  the  Water  and  so 
on.  This  particular  theme  of  Sieglinda's  is,  in  truth, 
of  no  great  musical  merit:  it  might  easily  be  the  pet 
climax  of  a  popular  sentimental  ballad:  in  fact,  the 
gushing  effect  which  is  its  sole  valuable  quality  is  so 
cheaply  attained  that  it  is  hardly  going  too  far  to  call 
it  the  most  trumpery  phrase  in  the  entire  tetralogy. 
Yet,  since  it  undoubtedly  does  gush  very  emphatically, 
Wagner  chose,  for  convenience'  sake,  to  work  up  this 
final  scene  with  it  rather  than  with  the  more  dis- 
tinguished, elaborate  and  beautiful  themes  connected 
with  the  love  of  Brynhild  and  Siegfried. 

He  would  certainly  not  have  thought  this  a  matter 
of  no  consequence  had  he  finished  the  whole  work  ten 
years  earlier.  It  must  always  be  borne  in  mind  that 
the  poem  of  The  Ring  was  complete  and  printed  in 
1853,  and  represents  the  sociological  ideas  which, 
after  germinating  in  the  European  atmosphere  for 
many  years,  had  been  brought  home  to  Wagner,  who 
was  intensely  susceptible  to  such  ideas,  by  the  crash 


Act  in     Night  Falls  On  The  Gods         99 

of  1849  at  Dresden.  Now  no  man  whose  mind  is 
alive  and  active,  as  Wagner's  was  to  the  day  of  his 
death,  can  keep  his  political  and  spiritual  opinions, 
much  less  his  philosophic  consciousness,  at  a  stand- 
still for  quarter  of  a  century  until  he  finishes  an  or- 
chestral score.  When  Wagner  first  sketched  Night 
Falls  On  The  Gods  he  was  35.  When  he  finished  the 
score  for  the  first  Bayreuth  festival  in  1876  he  had 
turned  60.  No  wonder  he  had  lost  his  old  gr.p  of  it 
and  left  it  behind  him.  He  even  tampered  with  The 
Rhine  Gold  for  the  sake  of  theatrical  effect  when 
stage-managing  it,  making  Wotan  pick  up  and 
brandish  a  sword  to  give  visible  point  to  his  sudden 
inspiration  as  to  the  raising  up  of  a  hero.  The 
sword  had  first  to  be  discovered  by  Fafnir  among 
the  Niblung  treasures  and  thrown  away  by  him  as  use- 
less. There  is  no  sense  in  this  device;  and  its  adop- 
tion shows  the  same  recklessness  as  to  the  original 
intention  which  we  find  in  the  music  of  the  last  act  of 
The  Dusk  of  the  Gods.1 

1  Die  Gorterdammerung  means  literally  Godsgloaming.  The  English  versions 
of  the  opera  are  usually  called  The  Dusk  of  the  Gods,  or  The  Twilight  of  the  Gods. 
I  have  purposely  introduced  the  ordinary  title  in  the  sentence  above  for  the  read- 
er's information. 


WHY  HE  CHANGED  HIS  MIND 

Wagner,  however,  was  not  the  man  to  allow  his 
grip  of  a  great  philosophic  theme  to  slacken  even  in 
twenty-five  years  if  the  theme  still  held  good  as  a 
theory  of  actual  life.  If  the  history  of  Germany 
from  1849  to  1876  had  been  the  history  of  Siegfried 
and  Wotan  transposed  into  the  key  of  actual  life, 
Night  Falls  On  The  Gods  would  have  been  the  logical 
consummation  of  Das  Rheingold  and  The  Valkyrie 
instead  of  the  operatic  anachronism  it  actually  is. 

But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  Siegfried  did  not  succeed 
and  Bismarck  did.  Roeckel  was  a  prisoner  whose 
imprisonment  made  no  difference;  Bakoonin  broke 
up,  not  Walhall,  but  the  International,  which  ended 
in  an  undignified  quarrel  between  him  and  Karl 
Marx.  The  Siegfrieds  of  1848  were  hopeless  politi- 
cal failures,  whereas  the  Wotans  and  Alberics  and 
Lokis  were  conspicuous  political  successes.  Even 
the  Mimes  held  their  own  as  against  Siegfried.  With 
the  single  exception  of  Ferdinand  Lassalle,  there  was 
no  revolutionary  leader  who  was  not  an  obvious  im- 
possibilist  in  practical  politics;  and  Lassalle  got 
himself  killed  in  a  romantic  and  quite  indefensible 


Why  He  Changed  His  Mind     101 

duel  after  wrecking  his  health  in  a  titanic  oratorical 
campaign  which  convinced  him  that  the  great 
majority  of  the  working  classes  were  not  ready  to 
join  him,  and  that  the  minority  who  were  ready  did 
not  understand  him.  The  International,  founded 
in  1 86 1  by  Karl  Marx  in  London,  and  mistaken  for 
several  years  by  nervous  newspapers  for  a  red 
spectre,  was  really  only  a  turnip  ghost.  It  achieved 
some  beginnings  of  International  Trade  Unionism 
by  inducing  English  workmen  to  send  money  to 
support  strikes  on  the  continent,  and  recalling 
English  workers  who  had  been  taken  across  the 
North  Sea  to  defeat  such  strikes;  but  on  its  revo- 
lutionary socialistic  side  it  was  a  romantic  figment. 
The  suppression  of  the  Paris  Commune,  one  of  the 
most  tragic  examples  in  history  of  the  pitilessness 
with  which  capable  practical  administrators  and 
soldiers  are  forced  by  the  pressure  of  facts  to  destroy 
romantic  amateurs  and  theatrical  dreamers,  made  an 
end  of  melodramatic  Socialism.  It  was  as  easy  for 
Marx  to  hold  up  Thiers  as  the  most  execrable  of  living 
scoundrels  and  to  put  upon  Gallifet  the  brand  that 
still  makes  him  impossible  in  French  politics  as  it  was 
for  Victor  Hugo  to  bombard  Napoleon  III  from  his 
paper  battery  in  Jersey.  It  was  also  easy  to  hold 
up  Felix  Pyat  and  Delescluze  as  men  of  much  loftier 
ideals  than  Thiers  and  Gallifet;  but  the  one  fact 
that  could  not  be  denied  was  that  when  it  came  to 
actual  shooting,  it  was  Gallifet  who  got  Delescluze 
shot  and  not  Delescluze  who  got  Gallifet  shot,  and 
that  when  it  came  to  administering  the  affairs  of 


102         The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

France,  Thiers  could  in  one  way  or  another  get  it 
done,  whilst  Pyat  could  neither  do  it  nor  stop  talking 
and  allow  somebody  else  to  do  it.  True,  the  penalty 
of  following  Thiers  was  to  be  exploited  by  the 
landlord  and  capitalist ;  but  then  the  penalty  of 
following  Pyat  was  to  get  shot  like  a  mad  dog,  or  at 
best  get  sent  to  New  Caledonia,  quite  unnecessarily 
and  uselessly. 

To  put  it  in  terms  of  Wagner's  allegory,  Alberic 
had  got  the  ring  back  again  and  was  marrying  into 
the  best  Walhall  families  with  it.  He  had  thought 
better  of  his  old  threat  to  dethrone  Wotan  and  Loki. 
He  had  found  that  Nibelheim  was  a  very  gloomy  place 
and  that  if  he  wanted  to  live  handsomely  and  safely, 
he  must  not  only  allow  Wotan  and  Loki  to  organize 
society  for  him,  but  pay  them  very  handsomely  for 
doing  it.  He  wanted  splendor,  military  glory,  loyalty, 
enthusiasm,  and  patriotism;  and  his  greed  and  glut- 
tony were  wholly  unable  to  create  them,  whereas 
Wotan  and  Loki  carried  them  all  to  a  triumphant 
climax  in  Germany  in  1871,  when  Wagner  himself 
celebrated  the  event  with  his  Kaisermarsch,  which 
sounded  much  more  convincing  than  the  Marseillaise 
or  the  Carmagnole. 

How,  after  the  Kaisermarsch,  could  Wagner  go 
back  to  his  idealization  of  Siegfried  in  1853  ?  How 
could  he  believe  seriously  in  Siegfried  slaying  the 
dragon  and  charging!  through  the  mountain  fire,  when 
the  immediate  foreground  was  occupied  by  the  Hotel 
de  Ville  with  Felix  Pyat  endlessly  discussing  the 
principles  of  Socialism  whilst  the  shells  of  Thiers 


Why  He  Changed  His  Mind     103 

were  already  battering  the  Arc  de  Triomphe,  and 
ripping  up  the  pavement  of  the  Champs  Elysees  ? 
Is  it  not  clear  that  things  had  taken  an  altogether 
unexpected  turn  — that  although  the  Ring  may,  like 
the  famous  Communist  Manifesto  of  Marx  and 
Engels,  be  an  inspired  guest  at  the  historic  laws  and 
predestined  end  of  our  capitalistic-theocratic  epoch, 
yet  Wagner,  like  Marx,  was  too  inexperienced  in 
technical  government  and  administration  and  too 
melodramatic  in  his  hero-contra-villain  conception  of 
the  class  struggle,  to  foresee  the  actual  process  by 
which  his  generalization  would  work  out,  or  the 
part  to  be  played  in  it  by  the  classes  involved  ? 

Let  us  go  back  for  a  moment  to  the  point  at  which 
the  Niblung  legend  first  becomes  irreconcilable  with 
Wagner's  allegory.  Fafnir  in  the  allegory  becomes  a 
capitalist;  but  Fafnir  in  the  legend  is  a  mere  hoarder. 
His  gold  does  not  bring  him  in  any  revenue.  It  does 
not  even  support  him:  he  has  to  go  out  and  forage 
for  food  and  drink.  In  fact,  he  is  on  the  way  to 
his  drinking-pool  when  Siegfried  kills  him.  And 
Siegfried  himself  has  no  more  use  for  gold  than 
Fafnir  :  the  only  difference  between  them  in  this 
respect  is  that  Siegfried  does  not  waste  his  time  in 
watching  a  barren  treasure  that  is  no  use  to  him, 
whereas  Fafnir  sacrifices  his  humanity  and  his  life 
merely  to  prevent  anybody  else  getting  it.  This  con- 
trast is  true  to  human  nature;  but  it  shunts  The 
Ring  drama  off  the  economic  lines  of  the  allegory. 
In  real  life,  Fafnir  is  not  a  miser:  he  seeks  dividends 
a  comfortable  life,  and  admission  to  the  circles  of 


104         The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

Wotan  and  Loki.  His  only  means  of  procuring 
these  is  to  restore  the  gold  to  Alberic  in  exchange 
for  scrip  in  Alberic's  enterprises.  Thus  fortified 
with  capital,  Alberic  exploits  his  fellow  dwarfs  as 
before,  and  also  exploits  Fafnir's  fellow  giants  who 
have  no  capital.  What  is  more,  the  toil,  forethought 
and  self-control  which  the  exploitation  involves,  and 
the  self-respect  and  social  esteem  which  its  success 
wins,  effect  an  improvement  in  Alberic's  own  char- 
acter which  neither  Marx  nor  Wagner  appear  to  have 
foreseen.  He  discovers  that  to  be  a  dull,  greedy, 
narrow-minded  money-grubber  is  not  the  way  to 
make  money  on  a  large  scale;  for  though  greed  may 
suffice  to  turn  tens  into  hundreds  and  even  hundreds 
into  thousands,  to  turn  thousands  into  hundreds  of 
thousands  requires  magnanimity  and  a  will  to  power 
rather  than  to  pelf.  And  to  turn  thousands  into 
millions,  Alberic  must  make  himself  an  earthly  pro- 
vidence for  masses  of  workmen:  he  must  create  towns 
and  govern  markets.  In  the  meantime,  Fafnir, 
wallowing  in  dividends  which  he  has  done  nothing 
to  earn,  may  rot,  intellectually  and  morally,  from 
mere  disuse  of  his  energies  and  lack  of  incentive  to 
excel;  but  the  more  imbecile  he  becomes,  the  more 
dependent  he  is  upon  Alberic,  and  the  more  the  re- 
sponsibility of  keeping  the  world-machine  in  working 
order  falls  upon  Alberic.  Consequently,  though 
Alberic  in  1850  may  have  been  merely  the  vulgar 
Manchester  Factory-owner  portrayed  by  Engels,  in 
1876  he  was  well  on  the  way  towards  becoming 
Krupp  of  Essen  or  Carnegie  of  Homestead. 


Why  He  Changed  His  Mind     105 

Now,  without  exaggerating  the  virtues  of  these 
gentlemen,  it  will  be  conceded  by  everybody  except 
perhaps  those  veteran  German  Social-Democrats 
who  have  made  a  cult  of  obsolescence  under  the 
name  of  Marxism,  that  the  modern  entrepreneur  is 
not  to  be  displaced  and  dismissed  so  lightly  as 
Alberic  is  dismissed  in  The  Ring.  They  are 
really  the  masters  of  the  whole  situation.  Wotan  is 
hardly  less  dependent  on  them  than  Fafnir;  the 
War-Lord  visits  their  work,  acclaims  them  in  stirr- 
ing speeches,  and  casts  down  their  enemies;  whilst 
Loki  makes  commercial  treaties  for  them  and  sub- 
jects all  his  diplomacy  to  their  approval. 

The  end  cannot  come  until  Siegfried  learns  Al- 
beric's trade  and  shoulders  Alberic's  burden.  Not 
having  as  yet  done  so,  he  is  still  completely  mas- 
tered by  Alberic.  He  does  not  even  rebel  against 
him  except  when  he  is  too  stupid  and  ignorant,  or  too 
romantically  impracticable,  to  see  that  Alberic's 
work,  like  Wotan's  work  and  Loki's  work,  is  neces- 
sary work,  and  that  therefore  Alberic  can  never 
be  superseded  by  a  warrior,  but  only  by  a  capa- 
ble man  of  business  who  is  prepared  to  continue  his 
work  without  a  day's  intermission.  Even  though 
the  proletarians  of  all  lands  were  to  become  "class 
conscious,"  and  obey  the  call  of  Marx  by  uniting  to 
carry  the  Class  struggle  to  a  proletarian  victory  in 
which  all  capital  should  become  common  property, 
and  all  Monarchs,  Millionaires,  Landlords  and 
Capitalists  become  common  citizens,  the  triumphant 
proletarians  would  have  either  to  starve  in  Anarchy 


106         The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

the  next  day  or  else  do  the  political  and  industrial 
work  which  is  now  being  done  tant  bten  que  mal  by 
our  Romanoffs,  our  Hohenzollerns,  our  Krupps, 
Carnegies,  Levers,  Pierpont  Morgans,  and  their 
political  retinues.  And  in  the  meantime  these  mag- 
nates must  defend  their  power  and  property  with 
all  their  might  against  the  revolutionary  forces  unr 
til  these  forces  become  positive,  executive,  admin- 
istrative forces,  instead  of  the  conspiracies  of  pro- 
testing, moralizing,  virtuously  indignant  amateurs 
who  mistook  Marx  for  a  man  of  affairs  and  Thiers 
for  a  stage  villain.  But  all  this  represents  a  develop- 
ment of  which  one  gathers  no  forecast  from  Wagner 
or  Marx.  Both  of  them  prophesied  the  end  of  our 
epoch,  and,  so  far  as  one  can  guess,  prophesied  it 
rightly.  They  also  brought  its  industrial  history 
up  to  the  year  1848  far  more  penetratingly  than  the 
academic  historians  of  their  time.  But  they  broke  off 
there  and  left  a  void  between  1848  and  the  end,  in 
which  we,  who  have  to  live  in  that  period,  get  no 
guidance  from  them.  The  Marxists  wandered  for 
years  in  this  void,  striving,  with  fanatical  super- 
stition, to  suppress  the  Revisionists  who,  facing  the 
fact  that  the  Social-Democratic  party  was  lost,  were 
trying  to  find  the  path  by  the  light  of  contemporary 
history  instead  of  vainly  consulting  the  oracle  in  the 
pages  of  Das  Kapital.  Marx  himself  was  too  sim- 
pleminded  a  recluse  and  too  full  of  the  validity  of  his 
remoter  generalizations,  and  the  way  in  which  the  rapid 
integration  of  capital  in  Trusts  and  Kartels  was  con- 
firming them,  to  be  conscious  of  the  void  himself. 


Why  He  Changed  His  Mind     107 

Wagner,  on  the  other  hand,  was  comparatively  a 
practical  man.  It  is  possible  to  learn  more  of  the 
world  by  producing  a  single  opera,  or  even  conduct- 
ing a  single  orchestral  rehearsal,  than  by  ten  years 
reading  in  the  Library  of  the  British  Museum.  Wag- 
ner must  have  learnt  between  Das  Rheingold  and 
the  Kaisermarsch  that  there  are  yet  several  dramas 
to  be  interpolated  in  The  Ring  after  The  Valkyries 
before  the  allegory  can  tell  the  whole  story,  and  that 
the  first  of  these  interpolated  dramas  will  be  much 
more  like  a  revised  Rienzi  than  like  Siegfried.  If 
anyone  doubts  the  extent  to  which  Wagner's  eyes 
had  been  opened  to  the  administrative  childishness 
and  romantic  conceit  of  the  heroes  of  the  revolution- 
ary generation  that  served  its  apprenticeship  on 
the  barricades  of  1848-9,  and  perished  on  those  of 
1871  under  Thiers'  mitrailleuses,  let  him  read  Eine 
Kapitulation,  that  scandalous  burlesque  in  which 
the  poet  and  composer  of  Siegfried,  with  the  levity 
of  a  schoolboy,  mocked  the  French  republicans  who 
were  doing  in  1871  what  he  himself  was  exiled  for 
doing  in  1849.  He  had  set  the  enthusiasm  of  the 
Dresden  Revolution  to  his  own  greatest  music;  but 
he  set  the  enthusiasm  of  twenty  years  later  in  de- 
rision to  the  music  of  Rossini.  There  is  no  mistaking 
the  tune  he  meant  to  suggest  by  his  doggerel  of 
Republik,  Republik,  Republik-lik-lik.  The  Over- 
ture to  Wilhelm  Tell  is  there  as  plainly  as  if  it  were 
noted  down  in  full  score. 

In  the  case  of  such  a  man  as  Wagner,  you  cannot 
explain  this  volte-face  as  mere  jingoism  produced  by 


108         The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

Germany's  overwhelming  victory  in  the  Franco- 
Prussian  War,  nor  as  personal  spite  against  the 
Parisians  for  the  Tannhauser  fiasco.  Wagner  had 
more  cause  for  personal  spite  against  his  own  country- 
men than  he  ever  had  against  the  French.  No  doubt 
his  outburst  gratified  the  pettier  feelings  which  great 
men  have  in  common  with  small  ones;  but  he  was 
not  a  man  to  indulge  in  such  gratifications,  or 
indeed  to  feel  them  as  gratifications,  if  he  had  not 
arrived  at  a  profound  philosophical  contempt  for  the 
inadequacy  of  the  men  who  were  trying  to  wield 
Nothung,  and  who  had  done  less  work  for  Wagner's 
own  art  than  a  single  German  King  and  he,  too,  only 
a  mad  one.  Wagner  had  by  that  time  done  too  much 
himself  not  to  know  that  the  world  is  ruled  by  deeds, 
not  by  good  intentions,  and  that  one  efficient  sinner 
is  worth  ten  futile  saints  and  martyrs. 

I  need  not  elaborate  the  point  further  in  these 
pages.  Like  all  men  of  genius,  Wagner  had  excep- 
tional sincerity,  exceptional  respect  for  facts,  excep- 
tional freedom  from  the  hypnotic  influence  of 
sensational  popular  movements,  exceptional  sense 
of  the  realities  of  political  power  as  distinguished 
from  the  pretences  and  idolatries  behind  which  the 
real  masters  of  modern  States  pull  their  wires  and 
train  their  guns.  When  he  scored  Night  Falls  On 
The  Gods,  he  had  accepted  the  failure  of  Siegfried 
and  the  triumph  of  the  Wotan-Loki-Alberic- 
trinity  as  a  fact.  He  had  given  up  dreaming  of 
heroes,  heroines,  and  final  solutions,  and  had  con- 
ceived a  new  protagonist  in  Parsifal,  whom  he 


Why  He  Changed  His  Mind     109 

announced,  not  as  a  hero,  but  as  a  fool;  who  was 
armed,  not  with  a  sword  which  cut  irresistibly,  but 
with  a  spear  which  he  held  only  on  condition  that  he 
did  not  use  it;  and  who  instead  of  exulting  in  the 
slaughter  of  a  dragon  was  frightfully  ashamed  of 
having  shot  a  swan.  The  change  in  the  conception 
of  the  Deliverer  could  hardly  be  more  complete. 
It  reflects  the  change  which  took  place  in  Wagner's 
mind  between  the  composition  of  The  Rhine  Gold 
and  Night  Falls  On  The  Gods;  and  it  explains 
why  he  dropped  The  Ring  allegory  and  fell  back  on 
the  status  quo  ante  by  Lohengrinizing. 

If  you  ask  why  he  did  not  throw  Siegfried  into 
the  waste  paper  basket  and  rewrite  The  Ring  from 
The  Valkyries  onwards,  one  must  reply  that  the 
time  had  not  come  for  such  a  feat.  Neither  Wagner 
nor  anyone  else  then  living  knew  enough  to  achieve  it. 
Besides,  what  he  had  already  done  had  reached  the 
limit  of  even  his  immense  energy  and  perseverance, 
and  so  he  did  the  best  he  could  with  the  unfinished 
and  for  ever  unfinishable  work,  rounding  it  off  with 
an  opera  much  as  Rossini  rounded  off  some  of  his 
religious  compositions  with  a  galop.  Only,  Rossini 
on  such  occasions  wrote  in  his  score  "Excusez  du 
peu,"  but  Wagner  left  us  to  find  out  the  change  for 
ourselves,  perhaps  to  test  how  far  we  had  really 
followed  his  meaning. 


WAGNER'S  OWN  EXPLANATION 

AND  now,  having  given  my  explanation  of  The 
Ring,  can  I  give  Wagner's  explanation  of  it  ?  If  I 
could  (and  I  can)  I  should  not  by  any  means  accept 
it  as  conclusive.  Nearly  half  a  century  has  passed 
since  the  tetralogy  was  written;  and  in  that  time  the 
purposes  of  many  half  instinctive  acts  of  genius  have 
become  clearer  to  the  common  man  than  they  were  to 
the  doers.  Some  years  ago,  in  the  course  of  an  ex- 
planation of  Ibsen's  plays,  I  pointed  out  that  it  was  by 
no  means  certain  or  even  likely  that  Ibsen  was  as 
definitely  conscious  of  his  thesis  as  I.  All  the  stupid 
people,  and  some  critics  who,  though  not  stupid,  had 
not  themselves  written  what  the  Germans  call 
"tendency"  works,  saw  nothing  in  this  but  a  fantastic 
affectation  of  the  extravagant  self-conceit  of  knowing 
more  about  Ibsen  than  Ibsen  himself.  Fortunately, 
in  taking  exactly  the  same  position  now  with  regard 
to  Wagner,  I  can  claim  his  own  authority  to  support 
me.  "How,"  he  wrote  to  Roeckel  on  the  23rd. 
August  1856,  "can  an  artist  expect  that  what  he  has 
felt  intuitively  should  be  perfectly  realized  by  others, 
seeing  that  he  himself  feels  in  the  presence  of  his 
work,  if  it  is  true  Art,  that  he  is  confronted  by  a  riddle, 


Wagner's  Own  Explanation      111 

about  which  he,  too,  might  have  illusions,  just  as 
another  might?" 

The  truth  is,  we  are  apt  to  deify  men  of  genius,  ex- 
actly as  we  deify  the  creative  force  of  the  universe, 
by  attributing  to  logical  design  what  is  the  result  of 
blind  instinct.  What  Wagner  meant  by  "true 
Art"  is  the  operation  of  the  artist's  instinct,  which  is 
just  as  blind  as  any  other  instinct.  Mozart,  asked 
for  an  explanation  of  his  works,  said  frankly  "  How 
do  I  know?"  Wagner,  being  a  philosopher  and 
critic  as  well  as  a  composer,  was  always  looking  for 
moral  explanations  of  what  he  had  created;  and  he 
hit  on  several  very  striking  ones,  all  different.  In  the 
same  way  one  can  conceive  Henry  the  Eighth  specu- 
lating very  brilliantly  about  the  circulation  of  his  own 
blood  without  getting  as  near  the  truth  as  Harvey  did 
long  after  his  death. 

None  the  less,  Wagner's  own  explanations  are  of 
exceptional  interest.  To  begin  with,  there  is  a  consid- 
erable portion  of  The  Ring,  especially  the  portraiture 
of  our  capitalistic  industrial  system  from  the  social- 
ist's point  of  view  in  the  slavery  of  the  Niblungs  and 
the  tyranny  of  Alberic,  which  is  unmistakable,  as  it 
dramatizes  that  portion  of  human  activity  which  lies 
well  within  the  territory  covered  by  our  intellectual 
consciousness.  All  this  is  concrete  Home  Office 
business,  so  to  speak:  its  meaning  was  as  clear  to 
Wagner  as  it  is  to  us.  Not  so  that  part  of  the  work 
which  deals  with  the  destiny  of  Wotan.  And  here,  as 
it  happened,  Wagner's  recollection  of  what  he  had 
been  driving  at  was  completely  upset  by  his  discovery, 


112         The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

soon  after  the  completion  of  The  Ring  poem,  of 
Schopenhaur's  famous  treatise  "The  World  as  Will 
and  Representation."  So  obsessed  did  he  become 
with  this  masterpiece  of  philosophic  art  that  he  de- 
clared that  it  contained  the  intellectual  demonstration 
of  the  conflict  of  human  forces  which  he  himself  had 
demonstrated  artistically  in  his  great  poem.  "  I  must 
confess,"  he  writes  to  Roeckel,  "to  having  arrived  at 
a  clear  understanding  of  my  own  works  of  art  through 
the  help  of  another,  who  has  provided  me  with  the 
reasoned  conceptions  corresponding  to  my  intuitive 
principles." 

Schopenhaur,  however,  had  done  nothing  of  the 
sort.  Wagner's  determination  to  prove  that  he  had 
been  a  Schopenhaurite  all  along  without  knowing  it 
only  shows  how  completely  the  fascination  of  the  great 
treatise  on  The  Will  had  run  away  with  his  memory. 
It  is  easy  to  see  how  this  happened.  Wagner  says  of 
himself  that  "seldom  has  there  taken  place  in  the  soul 
of  one  and  the  same  man  so  profound  a  division  and 
estrangement  between  the  intuitive  or  impulsive  part 
of  his  nature  and  his  consciously  or  reasonably  formed 
ideas."  And  since  Schopenhaur's  great  contribution 
to  modern  thought  was  to  educate  us  into  clear  con- 
sciousness of  this  distinction — a  distinction  familiar, 
in  a  fanciful  way,  to  the  Ages  of  Faith  and  Art  before 
the  Renascence,  but  afterwards  swamped  in  the 
Rationalism  of  that  movement — it  was  inevitable  that 
Wagner  should  jump  at  Schopenhaur's  metaphysi- 
ology  (I  use  a  word  less  likely  to  be  mistaken  than 
metaphysics)  as  the  very  thing  for  him.  But  meta- 


Wagner's  Own  Explanation     113 

physiology  is  one  thing,  political  philosophy  another. 
The  political  philosophy  of  Siegfried  is  exactly  con- 
trary to  the  political  philosphy  of  Schopenhaur, 
although  the  same  clear  metaphysiological  distinction 
between  the  instinctive  part  of  man  (his  Will)  and  his 
reasoning  faculty  (dramatized  in  The  Ring  as  Loki) 
is  insisted  on  in  both.  The  difference  is  that  to 
Schopenhaur  the  Will  is  the  universal  tormentor  of 
man,  the  author  of  that  great  evil,  Life;  whilst  reason 
is  the  divine  gift  that  is  finally  to  overcome  this  life- 
creating  will  and  lead,  through  its  abnegation,  to 
cessation  and  peace,  annihilation  and  Nirvana.  This 
is  the  doctrine  of  Pessimism.  Now  Wagner  was, 
when  he  wrote  The  Ring,  a  most  sanguine  revolu- 
tionary Meliorist,  contemptuous  of  the  reasoning 
faculty,  which  he  typified  in  the  shifty,  unreal,  de- 
lusive Loki,  and  full  of  faith  in  the  life-giving  Will, 
which  he  typified  in  the  glorious  Siegfried.  Not 
until  he  read  Schopenhaur  did  he  become  bent  on 
proving  that  he  had  always  been  a  Pessimist  at  heart, 
and  that  Loki  was  the  most  sensible  and  worthy 
adviser  of  Wotan  in  The  Rhine  Gold. 

Sometimes  he  faces  the  change  in  his  opinions 
frankly  enough.  "  My  Niblung  drama, "  he  writes  to 
Roeckel,  "had  taken  form  at  a  time  when  I  had  built 
up  with  my  reason  an  optimistic  world  on  Hellenic 
principles,  believing  that  nothing  was  necessary  for 
the  realization  of  such  a  world  but  that  men  should 
wish  it.  I  ingeniously  set  aside  the  problem  why  they 
did  not  wish  it.  I  remember  that  it  was  with  this  de- 
finite creative  purpose  that  I  conceived  the  personality 


114         The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

of  Siegfried,  with  the  intention  of  representing  an 
existence  free  from  pain."  But  he  appeals  to  his 
earlier  works  to  show  that  behind  all  these  artificial 
optimistic  ideas  there  was  always  with  him  an  intu- 
ition of  "the  sublime  tragedy  of  renunciation,  the 
negation  of  the  will."  In  trying  to  explain  this,  he 
is  full  of  ideas  philosophically,  and  full  of  the  most 
amusing  contradictions  personally.  Optimism,  as  an 
accidental  excursion  into  the  barren  paths  of  reason 
on  his  own  part,  he  calls  "Hellenic."  In  others  he 
denounces  it  as  rank  Judaism,  the  Jew  having  at  that 
time  become  for  him  the  whipping  boy  for  all  modern 
humanity.  In  a  letter  from  London  he  expounds 
Schopenhaur  to  Roeckel  with  enthusiasm,  preaching 
the  renunciation  of  the  Will  to  Live  as  the  redemption 
from  all  error  and  vain  pursuits:  in  the  next  letter  he 
resumes  the  subject  with  unabated  interest,  and  fin- 
ishes by  mentioning  that  on  leaving  London  he  went  to 
Geneva  and  underwent  "  a  most  beneficial  course  of 
hydropathy."  Seven  months  before  this  he  had 
written  as  follows:  "Believe  me,  I  too  was  once 
possessed  by  the  idea  of  a  country  life.  In  order 
to  become  a  radically  healthy  human  being,  I 
went  two  years  ago  to  a  Hydropathic  Establish- 
ment, prepared  to  give  up  Art  and  everything 
if  I  could  once  more  become  a  child  of  Nature. 
But,  my  good  friend,  I  was  obliged  to  laugh  at  my 
own  naivete  when  I  found  myself  almost  going 
mad.  None  of  us  will  reach  the  promised  land:  we 
shall  all  die  in  the  wilderness.  Intellect  is,  as  some 
one  has  said,  a  sort  of  disease:  it  is  incurable. 


Wagner's  Own  Explanation     115 

Roeckel  knew  his  man  of  old,  and  evidently  pressed 
him  for  explanations  of  the  inconsistencies  of  The 
Ring  with  Night  Falls  On  The  Gods.  Wagner  de- 
fended himself  with  unfailing  cleverness  and  oc- 
casional petulances,  ranging  from  such  pleas  as  "I 
believe  a  true  instinct  has  kept  me  from  a  too  great 
definiteness;  for  it  has  been  borne  in  on  me  that  an 
absolute  disclosure  of  the  intention  disturbs  true 
insight,  "to  a  volley  of  explanations  and  commentaries 
on  the  explanations.  He  gets  excited  and  annoyed 
because  Roeckel  will  not  admire  the  Brynhild  of 
Night  Falls  On  The  Gods ;  re-invents  the  Tarnhelm 
scene;  and  finally,  the  case  being  desperate,  exclaims, 
"  It  is  wrong  of  you  to  challenge  me  to  explain  it  in 
words :  you  must  feel  that  something  is  being  enacted 
that  is  not  to  be  expressed  in  mere  words." 

THE  PESSIMIST  AS  AMORIST 

Sometimes  he  gets  very  far  away  from  Pessimism 
indeed,  and  recommends  Roeckel  to  solace  his  cap- 
tivity, not  by  conquering  the  will  to  live  at  liberty, 
but  by  "the  inspiring  influences  of  the  Beautiful." 
The  next  moment  he  throws  over  even  Art  for  Life. 
"Where  life  ends,"  he  says,  very  wittily,  "Art  be- 
gins. In  youth  we  turn  to  Art,  we  know  not  why; 
and  only  when  we  have  gone  through  with  Art  and 
come  out  on  the  other  side,  we  learn  to  our  cost  that 
we  have  missed  Life  itself. "  His  only  comfort  is  that 
he  is  beloved.  And  on  the  subject  of  love  he  lets  him- 
self loose  in  a  manner  that  would  have  roused  the 
bitterest  scorn  in  Schopenhaur,  though,  as  we  have 


116         The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

seen  (p.  75),  it  is  highly  characteristic  of  Wagner. 
"Love  in  its  most  perfect  reality,"  he  says,  "is  only 
possible  between  the  sexes:  it  is  only  as  man  and 
woman  that  human  beings  can  truly  love.  Every 
other  manifestation  of  love  can  be  traced  back  to  that 
one  absorbingly  real  feeling,  of  which  all  other  affec- 
tions are  but  an  emanation,  a  connection,  or  an  imi- 
tation. It  is  an  error  to  look  on  this  as  only  one  of  the 
forms  in  which  love  is  revealed,  as  if  there  were  other 
forms  coequal  with  it,  or  even  superior  to  it.  He  who 
after  the  manner  of  metaphysicians  prefers  unreality  to 
reality,  and  derives  the  concrete  from  the  abstract — in 
short,  puts  the  word  before  the  fact — may  be  right  in 
esteeming  the  idea  of  love  as  higher  than  the  expres- 
sion of  love,  and  may  affirm  that  actual  love  made 
manifest  in  feeling  is  nothing  but  the  outward  and 
visible  sign  of  a  pre-existent,  non-sensuous,  abstract 
love;  and  he  will  do  well  to  despise  that  sensuous 
function  in  general.  In  any  case  it  were  safe  to  bet 
that  such  a  man  had  never  loved  or  been  loved  as 
human  beings  can  love,  or  he  would  have  understood 
that  in  despising  this  feeling,  what  he  condemned  was 
its  sensual  expression,  the  outcome  of  man's  animal 
nature,  and  not  true  human  love.  The  highest  satis- 
faction and  expression  of  the  individual  is  only  to  be 
found  in  his  complete  absorption,  and  that  is  only 
possible  through  love.  Now  a  human  being  is  both 
man  and  woman:  it  is  only  when  these  two  are  united 
that  the  real  human  being  exists;  and  thus  it  is  only 
by  love  that  man  and  woman  attain  to  the  full  meas- 
ure of  humanity.  But  when  nowadays  we  talk  of  a 


Wagner's  Own  Explanation     117 

human  being,  such  heartless  blockheads  are  we  that 
quite  involuntarily  we  only  think  of  man.  It  is  only 
in  the  union  of  man  and  woman  by  love  (sensuous  and 
supersensuous)  that  the  human  being  exists;  and  as 
the  human  being  cannot  rise  to  the  conception  of  any- 
thing higher  than  his  own  existence — his  own  being — 
so  the  transcendent  act  of  his  life  is  this  consummation 
of  his  humanity  through  love." 

It  is  clear  after  this  utterance  from  the  would- 
be  Schopenhaurian,  that  Wagner's  explanations  of 
his  works  for  the  most  part  explain  nothing  but  the 

^         .      ...  -^ - —      •      •  *  — £. — — -  — —  O         

mood  in  which  he  happened  to  be  on  the  day  he  ad- 
vanced them,  or  the  train  of  thought  suggested  to  his 
very  susceptible  imagination  and  active  mind  by  the 
points  raised  by  his  questioner.  Especially  in  his 
private  letters,  where  his  outpourings  are  modified  by 
his  dramatic  consciousness  of  the  personality  of  his 
correspondent,  do  we  find  him  taking  all  manner  of 
positions,  and  putting  forward  all  sorts  of  cases  which 
must  be  taken  as  clever  and  suggestive  special 
pleadings,  and  not  as  serious  and  permanent  exposi- 
tions of  his  works.  These  works  must  speak  for  them- 
selves :  if  The  Ring  says  one  thing,  and  a  letter  written 
afterwards  says  that  it  said  something  else,  The  Ring 
must  be  taken  to  confute  the  letter  just  as  conclusively 
as  if  the  two  had  been  written  by  different  hands. 
However,  nobody  fairly  well  acquainted  with  Wagner's 
utterances  as  a  whole  will  find  any  unaccountable 
contradictions  in  them.  As  in  all  men  of  his  type, 
our  manifold  nature  was  so  marked  in  him  that  he  was 
like  several  different  men  rolled  into  one.  When  he 


118         The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

had  exhausted  himself  in  the  character  of  the  most 
pugnacious,  aggressive,  and  sanguine  of  reformers,  he 
rested  himself  as  a  Pessimist  and  Nirvanist.  In  The 
Ring  the  quietism  of  Brynhild's  "Rest,  rest,  thou 
God"  is  sublime  in  its  deep  conviction;  but  you  have 
only  to  turn  back  the  pages  to  find  the  irrepressible 
bustle  of  Siegfried  and  the  revelry  of  the  clansmen  ex- 
pressed with  equal  zest.  Wagner  was  not  a  Schop- 
enhaurite  every  day  in  the  week,  nor  even  a  Wagnerite. 
His  mind  changes  as  often  as  his  mood.  On  Mon- 
day nothing  will  ever  induce  him  to  return  to  quill- 
driving:  on  Tuesday  he  begins  a  new  pamphlet.  On 
Wednesday  he  is  impatient  of  the  misapprehensions  of 
people  who  cannot  see  how  impossible  it  is  for  him  to 
preside  as  a  conductor  over  platform  performances 
of  fragments  of  his  works,  which  can  only  be  under- 
stood when  presented  strictly  according  to  his  in- 
tention on  the  stage:  on  Thursday  he  gets  up  a 
concert  of  Wagnerian  selections,  and  when  it  is  over 
writes  to  his  friends  describing  how  profoundly  both 
bandsmen  and  audience  were  impressed.  On  Fri- 
day he  exults  in  the  self-assertion  of  Siegfried's  will 
against  all  moral  ordinances,  and  is  full  of  a  revolu- 
tionary sense  of  "the  universal  law  of  change  and 
renewal":  on  Saturday  he  has  an  attack  of  holiness, 
and  asks,  "Can  you  conceive  a  moral  action  of  which 
the  root  idea  is  not  renunciation  ?"  In  short,  Wagner 
can  be  quoted  against  himself  almost  without  limit, 
much  as  Beethoven's  adagios  could  be  quoted  against 
his  scherzos  if  a  dispute  arose  between  two  fools  as  to 
whether  he  was  a  melancholy  man  or  a  merry  one. 


THE  MUSIC  OF  THE  RING 

THE   REPRESENTATIVE   THEMES 

To  be  able  to  follow  the  music  of  The  Ring,  all 
that  is  necessary  is  to  become  familiar  enough  with 
the  brief  musical  phrases  out  of  which  it  is  built  to 
recognize  them  and  attach  a  certain  definite  signifi- 
cance to  them,  exactly  as  any  ordinary  Englishman  re- 
cognizes and  attaches  a  definite  significance  to  the 
opening  bars  of  God  Save  the  King.  There  is  no 
difficulty  here:  every  soldier  is  expected  to  learn  and 
distinguish  between  different  bugle  calls  and  trumpet 
calls;  and  anyone  who  can  do  this  can  learn  and 
distinguish  between  the  representative  themes  or 
"leading  motives"  (Leitmotifs)  of  The  Ring.  They 
are  the  easier  to  learn  because  they  are  repeated 
again  and  again;  and  the  main  ones  are  so  emphati- 
cally impressed  on  the  ear  whilst  the  spectator  is 
looking  for  the  first  time  at  the  objects,  or  witnessing 
the  first  strong  dramatic  expression  of  the  ideas  they 
denote,  that  the  requisite  association  is  formed  un- 
consciously. The  themes  are  neither  long,  nor  com- 
plicated, nor  difficult.  Whoever  can  pick  up  the 
flourish  of  a  coach-horn,  the  note  of  a  bird,  the  rhythm 


120         The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

of  the  postman's  knock  or  of  a  horse's  gallop,  will  be 
at  no  loss  in  picking  up  the  themes  of  The  Ring.  No 
doubt,  when  it  comes  to  forming  the  necessary  mental 
association  with  the  theme,  it  may  happen  that  the 
spectator  may  find  his  ear  conquering  the  tune  more 
easily  than  his  mind  conquers  the  thought.  But  for 
the  most  part  the  themes  do  not  denote  thoughts  at 
all,  but  either  emotions  of  a  quite  simple  universal 
kind,  or  the  sights,  sounds  and  fancies  common  enough 
to  be  familiar  to  children.  Indeed  some  of  them  are 
as  frankly  childish  as  any  of  the  funny  little  orchestral 
interludes  which,  in  Haydn's  Creation,  introduce  the 
horse,  the  deer,  or  the  worm.  We  have  both  the 
horse  and  the  worm  in  The  Ring,  treated  exactly  in 
Haydn's  manner,  and  with  an  effect  not  a  whit  less 
ridiculous  to  superior  people  who  decline  to  take  it 
good-humoredly.  Even  the  complaisance  of  good 
Wagnerites  is  occasionally  rather  overstrained  by  the 
way  in  which  Brynhild's  allusions  to  her  charger 
Grani  elicit  from  the  band  a  little  rum-ti-tum  triplet 
which  by  itself  is  in  no  way  suggestive  of  a  horse,  al- 
though a  continuous  rush  of  such  triplets  makes  a 
very  exciting  musical  gallop. 

Other  themes  denote  objects  which  cannot  be 
imitatively  suggested  by  music:  for  instance,  music 
cannot  suggest  a  ring,  and  cannot  suggest  gold;  yet 
each  of  these  has  a  representative  theme  which  per- 
vades the  score  in  all  directions.  In  the  case  of  the 
gold  the  association  is  established  by  the  very  salient 
way  in  which  the  orchestra  breaks  into  the  pretty 
theme  in  the  first  act  of  The  Rhine  Gold  at  the  mom- 


The  Music  of  the  Ring         121 

ent  when  the  sunrays  strike  down  through  the  water 
and  light  up  the  glittering  treasure,  thitherto  invisible. 
The  reference  of  the  strange  little  theme  of  the  wish- 
ing cap  is  equally  manifest  from  the  first,  since  the 
spectator's  attention  is  wholly  taken  up  with  the 
Tarnhelm  and  its  magic  when  the  theme  is  first 
pointedly  uttered  by  the  orchestra.  The  sword  theme 
is  introduced  at  the  end  of  The  Rhine  Gold  to  express 
Wotan's  hero  inspiration;  and  I  have  already  men- 
tioned that  Wagner,  unable,  when  it  came  to  practi- 
cal stage  management,  to  forego  the  appeal  to  the  eye 
as  well  as  to  the  thought,  here  made  Wotan  pick  up  a 
sword  and  brandish  it,  though  no  such  instruction 
appears  in  the  printed  score.  When  this  sacrifice  to 
Wagner's  scepticism  as  to  the  reality  of  any  appeal 
to  an  audience  that  is  not  made  through  their  bodily 
sense  is  omitted,  the  association  of  the  theme  with  the 
sword  is  not  formed  until  that  point  in  the  first  act  of 
The  Valkyries  at  which  Siegmund  is  left  alone  by 
Hunding's  hearth,  weaponless,  with  the  assurance 
that  he  will  have  to  fight  for  his  life  at  dawn  with  his 
host.  He  recalls  then  how  his  father  promised  him  a 
sword  for  his  hour  of  need;  and  as  he  does  so,  a 
flicker  from  the  dying  fire  is  caught  by  the  golden  hilt 
of  the  sword  in  the  tree,  when  the  theme  immediately 
begins  to  gleam  through  the  quiver  of  sound  from  the 
orchestra,  and  only  dies  out  as  the  fire  sinks  and 
the  sword  is  once  more  hidden  by  the  darkness. 
Later  on,  this  theme,  which  is  never  silent  whilst 
Sieglinda  is  dwelling  on  the  story  of  the  sword,  leaps 
out  into  the  most  dazzling  splendor  the  band  can  give 


122         The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

it  when  Siegmund  triumphantly  draws  the  weapon 
from  the  tree.  As  it  consists  of  seven  notes  only,  with 
a  very  marked  measure,  and  a  melody  like  a  simple 
flourish  on  a  trumpet  or  post  horn,  nobody  capable 
of  catching  a  tune  can  easily  miss  it. 

The  Valhalla  theme,  sounded  with  solemn  grandeur 
as  the  home  of  the  gods  first  appears  to  us  and  to 
Wotan  at  the  beginning  of  the  second  scene  of  The 
Rhine  Gold,  also  cannot  be  mistaken.  It,  too,  has  a 
memorable  rhythm;  and  its  majestic  harmonies,  far 
from  presenting  those  novel  or  curious  problems  in 
polyphony  of  which  Wagner  still  stands  suspected  by 
superstitious  people,  are  just  those  three  simple 
chords  which  festive  students  who  vamp  accompani- 
ments to  comic  songs  "by  ear"  soon  find  sufficient 
for  nearly  all  the  popular  tunes  in  the  world. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  ring  theme,  when  it  begins 
to  hurtle  through  the  third  scene  of  The  Rhine  Gold, 
cannot  possibly  be  referred  to  any  special  feature 
in  the  general  gloom  and  turmoil  of  the  den  of 
the  dwarfs.  It  is  not  a  melody,  but  merely  the  dis- 
placed metric  accent  which  musicians  call  syncopa- 
tion, rung  on  the  notes  of  the  familiar  chord  formed  by 
piling  three  minor  thirds  on  top  of  one  another 
(technically,  the  chord  of  the  minor  ninth,  ci-devant 
diminished  seventh).  One  soon  picks  it  up  and 
identifies  it;  but  it  does  not  get  introduced  in  the 
unequivocally  clear  fashion  of  the  themes  described 
above,  or  of  that  malignant  monstrosity,  the  theme 
which  denotes  the  curse  on  the  gold.  Consequently  it 
cannot  be  said  that  the  musical  design  of  the  work  is 


The  Music  of  the  Ring         123 

perfectly  clear  at  the  first  hearing  as  regards  all  the 
themes;  but  it  is  so  as  regards  most  of  them,  the 
main  lines  being  laid  down  as  emphatically  and  in- 
telligibly as  the  dramatic  motives  in  a  Shakespearean 
play.  As  to  the  coyer  subtleties  of  the  score,  their 
discovery  provides  fresh  interest  for  repeated  hearings, 
giving  The  Ring  a  Beethovenian  inexhaustibility  and 
toughness  of  wear. 

The  themes  associated  with  the  individual  charac- 
ters get  stamped  on  the  memory  easily  by  the  simple 
association  of  the  sound  of  the  theme  with  the  appear- 
ance of  the  person  indicated.  Its  appropriateness  is 
generally  pretty  obvious.  Thus,  the  entry  of  the 
giants  is  made  to  a  vigorous  stumping,  tramping 
measure.  Mimmy,  being  a  quaint,  weird  old  creat- 
ure, has  a  quaint,  weird  theme  of  two  thin  chords  that 
creep  down  eerily  one  to  the  other.  Gutrune's  theme 
is  pretty  and  caressing:  Gunther's  bold,  rough,  and 
commonplace.  It  is  a  favorite  trick  of  Wagner's, 
when  one  of  his  characters  is  killed  on  the  stage,  to 
make  the  theme  attached  to  that  character  weaken, 
fail,  and  fade  away  with  a  broken  echo  into  silence. 

THE  CHARACTERIZATION 

All  this,  however,  is  the  mere  child's  play  of  theme 
work.  The  more  complex  characters,  instead  of  hav- 
ing a  simple  musical  label  attached  to  them,  have  their 
characteristic  ideas  and  aspirations  identified  with 
special  representative  themes  as  they  come  into  play 
in  the  drama;  and  the  chief  merit  of  the  thematic 


124         The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

structure  of  The  Ring  is  the  mastery  with  which  the 
dramatic  play  of  the  ideas  is  reflected  in  the  contra- 
puntal play  of  the  themes.  We  do  not  find  Wotan, 
like  the  dragon  or  the  horse,  or,  for  the  matter  of 
that,  like  the  stage  demon  in  Weber's  Freischiitz  or 
Meyerbeer's  Robert  the  Devil,  with  one  fixed  theme 
attached  to  him  like  a  name  plate  to  an  umbrella, 
blaring  unaltered  from  the  orchestra  whenever  he 
steps  on  the  stage.  Sometimes  we  have  the  Valhalla 
theme  used  to  express  the  greatness  of  the  gods  as  an 
idea  of  Wotan's.  Again,  we  have  his  spear,  the  sym- 
bol of  his  power,  identified  with  another  theme,  on 
which  Wagner  finally  exercises  his  favorite  device 
by  making  it  break  and  fail,  cut  through,  as  it  were,  by 
the  tearing  sound  of  the  theme  identified  with  the 
sword,  when  Siegfried  shivers  the  spear  with  the 
stroke  of  Nothung.  Yet  another  theme  connected 
with  Wotan  is  the  Wanderer  music  which  breaks  with 
such  a  majestic  reassurance  on  the  nightmare  terror 
of  Mimmy  when  Wotan  appears  at  the  mouth  of  his 
cave  in  the  scene  of  the  three  riddles.  Thus  not  only 
are  there  several  Wotan  themes,  but  each  varies  in  its 
inflexions  and  shades  of  tone  color  according  to  its 
dramatic  circumstances.  So,  too,  the  merry  horn 
tune  of  the  young  Siegfried  changes  its  measure,  loads 
itself  with  massive  harmonies,  and  becomes  an  ex- 
ordium of  the  most  imposing  splendor  when  it  heralds 
his  entry  as  full-fledged  hero  in  the  prologue  to  Night 
Falls  On  The  Gods.  Even  Mimmy  has  his  two  or 
three  themes:  the  weird  one  already  described;  the 
little  one  in  triple  measure  imitating  the  tap  of  his 


The  Music  of  the  Ring         125 

hammer,  and  fiercely  mocked  in  the  savage  laugh  of 
Alberic  at  his  death;  and  finally  the  crooning  tune  in 
which  he  details  all  his  motherly  kindnesses  to  the 
little  foundling  Siegfried.  Besides  this  there  are  all 
manner  of  little  musical  blinkings  and  shamblings 
and  whinings,  the  least  hint  of  which  from  the  orches- 
tra at  any  moment  instantly  brings  Mimmy  to  mind, 
whether  he  is  on  the  stage  at  the  time  or  not. 

In  truth,  dramatic  characterization  in  music  cannot 
be  carried  very  far  by  the  use  of  representative  themes. 
Mozart,  the  greatest  of  all  masters  of  this  art,  never 
dreamt  of  employing  them;  and,  extensively  as  they 
are  used  in  The  Ring,  they  do  not  enable  Wagner  to 
dispense  with  the  Mozartian  method.  Apart  from 
the  themes,  Siegfried  and  Mimmy  are  still  as  sharply 
distinguished  from  one  another  by  the  character  of 
their  music  as  Don  Giovanni  from  Leporello,  Wotan 
from  Gutrune  as  Sarastro  from  Papagena.  It  is 
true  that  the  themes  attached  to  the  characters  have 
the  same  musical  appropriateness  as  the  rest  of  the 
music:  for  example,  neither  the  Valhalla  nor  the 
spear  themes  could,  without  the  most  ludicrous  incon- 
gruity, be  used  for  the  forest  bird  or  the  unstable,  de- 
lusive Loki;  but  for  all  that  the  musical  character- 
ization must  be  regarded  as  independent  of  the 
specific  themes,  since  the  entire  elimination  of  the 
thematic  system  from  the  score  would  leave  the 
characters  as  well  distinguished  musically  as  they  are 
at  present. 

One  more  illustration  of  the  way  in  which  the  the- 
matic system  is  worked.  There  are  two  themes  con- 


126         The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

nected  with  Loki.  One  is  a  rapid,  sinuous,  twisting, 
shifty  semiquaver  figure  suggested  by  the  unsubstan- 
tial, elusive  logic-spinning  of  the  clever  one's  brain- 
craft.  The  other  is  the  fire  theme.  In  the  first  act  of 
Siegfried,  Mimmy  makes  his  unavailing  attempt  to 
explain  fear  to  Siegfried.  With  the  horror  fresh  upon 
him  of  the  sort  of  nightmare  into  which  he  has  fallen 
after  the  departure  of  the  Wanderer,  and  which  has 
taken  the  form,  at  once  fanciful  and  symbolic,  of  a 
delirious  dread  of  light,  he  asks  Siegfried  whether 
he  has  never,  whilst  wandering  in  the  forest,  had  his 
heart  set  hammering  in  frantic  dread  by  the  mysteri- 
ous lights  of  the  gloaming.  To  this,  Siegfried,  greatly 
astonished,  replies  that  on  such  occasions  his  heart  is 
altogether  healthy  and  his  sensations  perfectly  normal. 
Here  Mimmy's  question  is  accompanied  by  the  tremu- 
lous sounding  of  the  fire  theme  with  its  harmonies 
most  oppressively  disturbed  and  troubled;  whereas 
with  Siegfried's  reply  they  become  quite  clear  and 
straightforward,  making  the  theme  sound  bold,  bril- 
liant, and  serene.  This  is  a  typical  instance  of  the 
way  in  which  the  themes  are  used. 

The  thematic  system  gives  symphonic  interest, 
reasonableness,  and  unity  to  the  music,  enabling  the 
composer  to  exhaust  every  aspect  and  quality  of  his 
melodic  material,  and,  in  Beethoven's  manner,  to 
work  miracles  of  beauty,  expression  and  significance 
with  the  briefest  phrases.  As  a  set-off  against  this,  it 
has  led  Wagner  to  indulge  in  repetitions  that  would 
be  intolerable  in  a  purely  dramatic  work.  Almost  the 
first  thing  that  a  dramatist  has  to  learn  in  constructing 


The  Music  of  the  Ring         127 

a  play  is  that  the  persons  must  not  come  on  the  stage 
in  the  second  act  and  tell  one  another  at  great  length 
what  the  audience  has  already  seen  pass  before  its  eyes 
in  the  first  act.  The  extent  to  which  Wagner  has  been 
seduced  into  violating  this  rule  by  his  affection  for  his 
themes  is  startling  to  a  practised  playwright.  Sieg- 
fried inherits  from  Wotan  a  mania  for  autobiography 
which  leads  him  to  inflict  on  every  one  he  meets  the 
story  of  Mimmy  and  the  dragon,  although  the  audi- 
ence have  spent  a  whole  evening  witnessing  the  events 
he  is  narrating.  Hagen  tells  the  story  to  Gunther; 
and  that  same  night  Alberic's  ghost  tells  it  over  again 
to  Hagen,  who  knows  it  already  as  well  as  the  audi- 
ence. Siegfried  tells  the  Rhine  maidens  as  much  of  it 
as  they  will  listen  to,  and  then  keeps  telling  it  to  his 
hunting  companions  until  they  kill  him.  Wotan's 
autobiography  on  the  second  evening  becomes  his  bio- 
graphy in  the  mouths  of  the  Norns  on  the  fourth. 
The  little  that  the  Norns  add  to  it  is  repeated  an  hour 
later  by  Valtrauta.  How  far  all  this  repetition  is  tol- 
erable is  a  matter  of  individual  taste.  A  good  story 
will  bear  repetition;  and  if  it  has  woven  into  it  such 
pretty  tunes  as  the  Rhine  maidens'  yodel,  Mimmy's 
tinkling  anvil  beat,  the  note  of  the  forest  bird,  the  call 
of  Siegfried's  horn,  and  so  on,  it  will  bear  a  good  deal 
of  rehearing.  Those  who  have  but  newly  learnt  their 
way  through  The  Ring  will  not  readily  admit  that 
there  is  a  bar  too  much  repetition. 

But  how  if  you  find  some  anti-Wagnerite  raising 
the  question  whether  the  thematic  system  does  not 
enable  the  composer  to  produce  a  music  drama  with 


128         The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

much  less  musical  fertility  than  was  required  from  his 
predecessors  for  the  composition  of  operas  under  the 
old  system! 

Such  discussions  are  not  within  the  scope  of  this 
little  book.  But  as  the  book  is  now  finished  (for 
really  nothing  more  need  be  said  about  The  Ring),  I 
am  quite  willing  to  add  a  few  pages  of  ordinary  musi- 
cal criticism,  partly  to  please  the  amateurs  who  enjoy 
that  sort  of  reading,  and  partly  for  the  guidance  of 
those  who  wish  to  obtain  some  hints  to  help  them 
through  such  critical  small  talk  about  Wagner  and 
Bayreuth  as  may  be  forced  upon  them  at  the  dinner 
table  or  between  the  acts. 


THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  MUSIC 

IN  the  old-fashioned  opera  every  separate  number 
involved  the  composition  of  a  fresh  melody;  but  it  is 
quite  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  this  creative  effort 
extended  continuously  throughout  the  number  from 
the  first  to  the  last  bar.  When  a  musician  composes 
according  to  a  set  metrical  pattern,  the  selection  of  the 
pattern  and  the  composition  of  the  first  stave  (a  stave 
in  music  corresponds  to  a  line  in  verse)  generally 
completes  the  creative  effort.  All  the  rest  follows 
more  or  less  mechanically  to  fill  up  the  pattern,  an  air 
being  very  like  a  wall-paper  design  in  this  respect. 
Thus  the  second  stave  is  usually  a  perfectly  obvious 
consequence  of  the  first;  and  the  third  and  fourth  an 
exact  or  very  slightly  varied  repetition  of  the  first  and 
second.  For  example,  given  the  first  line  of  Pop  Goes 
the  Weasel  or  Yankee  Doodle,  any  musical  cobbler 
could  supply  the  remaining  three.  There  is  very  little 
tune  turning  of  this  kind  in  The  Ring;  and  it  is  note- 
worthy that  where  it  does  occur,  as  in  Siegmund's 
spring  song  and  Mimmy's  croon,  "Em  zullendes 
Kind,"  the  effect  of  the  symmetrical  staves,  recurring 


130         The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

as  a  mere  matter  of  form,  is  perceptibly  poor  and  plat- 
itudinous compared  with  the  free  flow  of  melody 
which  prevails  elsewhere. 

The  other  and  harder  way  of  composing  is  to  take  a 
strain  of  free  melody,  and  ring  every  variety  of  change 
of  mood  upon  it  as  if  it  were  a  thought  that  some- 
times brought  hope,  sometimes  melancholy,  some- 
times exultation,  sometimes  raging  despair  and  so  on. 
To  take  several  themes  of  this  kind,  and  weave  them 
together  into  a  rich  musical  fabric  passing  panor- 
amically  before  the  ear  with  a  continually  varying  flow 
of  sentiment,  is  the  highest  feat  of  the  musician:  it  is 
in  this  way  that  we  get  the  fugue  of  Bach  and  the  sym- 
phony of  Beethoven.  The  admittedly  inferior  music- 
ian is  the  one  who,  like  Auber  and  Offenbach,  not 
to  mention  our  purveyors  of  drawingroom  ballads, 
can  produce  an  unlimited  quantity  of  symmetrical 
tunes,  but  cannot  weave  themes  symphonically. 

When  this  is  taken  into  account,  it  will  be  seen 
that  the  fact  that  there  is  a  great  deal  of  repetition  in 
The  Ring  does  not  distinguish  it  from  the  old-fashion- 
ed operas.  The  real  difference  is  that  in  them  the 
repetition  was  used  for  the  mechanical  completion  of 
conventional  metric  patterns,  whereas  in  The  Ring 
the  recurrence  of  the  theme  is  an  intelligent  and  in- 
teresting consequence  of  the  recurrence  of  the  dramatic 
phenomenon  which  it  denotes.  It  should  be  remem- 
bered also  that  the  substitution  of  symphonically 
treated  themes  for  tunes  with  symmetrical  eight-bar 
staves  and  the  like,  has  always  been  the  rule  in  the 
highest  forms  of  music.  To  describe  it,  or  be  affected 


The  Old  and  the  New  Music     131 

by  it,  as  an  abandonment  of  melody,  is  to  confess 
oneself  an  ignoramus  conversant  only  with  dance 
tunes  and  ballads. 

The  sort  of  stuff  a  purely  dramatic  musician  pro- 
duces when  he  hampers  himself  with  metric  patterns 
in  composition  is  not  unlike  what  might  have  resulted 
in  literature  if  Carlyle  (for  example)  had  been  com- 
pelled by  convention  to  write  his  historical  stories  in 
rhymed  stanzas.  That  is  to  say,  it  limits  his  fertility 
to  an  occasional  phrase,  and  three  quarters  of  the 
time  exercises  only  his  barren  ingenuity  in  fitting 
rhymes  and  measures  to  it.  In  literature  the  great 
masters  of  the  art  have  long  emancipated  themselves 
from  metric  patterns.  Nobody  claims  that  the 
hierarchy  of  modern  impassioned  prose  writers,  from 
Bunyan  to  Ruskin,  should  be  placed  below  the  writers 
of  pretty  lyrics,  from  Herrick  to  Mr.  Austin  Dobson. 
Only  in  dramatic  literature  do  we  find  the  devasta- 
ting tradition  of  blank  verse  still  lingering,  giving 
factitious  prestige  to  the  platitudes  of  dullards,  and 
robbing  the  dramatic  style  of  the  genuine  poet  of  its 
full  natural  endowment  of  variety,  force  and  simplicity. 

This  state  of  things,  as  we  have  seen,  finds  its  par- 
allel in  musical  art,  since  music  can  be  written  in 
prose  themes  or  in  versified  tunes;  only  here  nobody 
dreams  of  disputing  the  greater  difficulty  of  the  prose 
forms,  and  the  comparative  triviality  of  versification. 
Yet  in  dramatic  music,  as  in  dramatic  literature,  the 
tradition  of  versification  clings  with  the  same  per- 
nicious results;  and  the  opera,  like  the  tragedy,  is 
conventionally  made  like  a  wall  paper.  The  theatre 


132         The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

seems  doomed  to  be  in  all  things  the  last  refuge  of  the 
hankering  after  cheap  prettiness  in  art. 

Unfortunately  this  confusion  of  the  decorative  with 
the  dramatic  element  in  both  literature  and  music  is 
maintained  by  the  example  of  great  masters  in  both 
arts.  Very  touching  dramatic  expression  can  be  com- 
bined with  decorative  symmetry  of  versification  when 
the  artist  happens  to  possess  both  the  decorative  and 
dramatic  gifts,  and  to  have  cultivated  both  hand 
in  hand.  Shakespeare  and  Shelley,  for  instance, 
far  from  being  hampered  by  the  conventional  obli- 
gation to  write  their  dramas  in  verse,  found  it  much 
the  easiest  and  cheapest  way  of  producing  them.  But 
if  Shakespeare  had  been  compelled  by  custom  to  write 
entirely  in  prose,  all  his  ordinary  dialogue  might  have 
been  as  good  as  the  first  scene  of  As  You  Like  It;  and 
all  his  lofty  passages  as  fine  as  "What  a  piece  of  work 
is  Man!",  thus  sparing  us  a  great  deal  of  blank  verse 
in  which  the  thought  is  commonplace,  and  the  ex- 
pression, though  catchingly  turned,  absurdly  pompous. 
The  Cenci  might  either  have  been  a  serious  drama  or 
might  never  have  been  written  at  all  if  Shelley  had  not 
been  allowed  to  carry  off  its  unreality  by  Elizabethan 
versification.  Still,  both  poets  have  achieved  many 
passages  in  which  the  decorative  and  dramatic  quali- 
ties are  not  only  reconciled,  but  seem  to  enhance  one 
another  to  a  pitch  otherwise  unattainable. 

Just  so  in  music.  When  we  find,  as  in  the  case  of 
Mozart,  a  prodigiously  gifted  and  arduously  trained 
musician  who  is  also,  by  a  happy  accident,  a  dramatist 
comparable  to  Moliere,  the  obligation  to  compose 


The  Old  and  the  New  Music     133 

operas  in  versified  numbers  not  only  does  not  em- 
barrass him,  but  actually  saves  him  trouble  and 
thought.  No  matter  what  his  dramatic  mood  may  be, 
he  expresses  it  in  exquisite  musical  verses  more 
easily  than  a  dramatist  of  ordinary  singleness  of 
talent  can  express  it  in  prose.  Accordingly,  he  too, 
like  Shakespeare  and  Shelley,  leaves  versified  airs, 
like  Dalla  sua  pace,  or  Cluck's  Che  faro  senza 
Euridice,  or  Weber's  Leise,  leise,  which  are  as  dram- 
atic from  the  first  note  to  the  last  as  the  untrammelled 
themes  of  The  Ring.  In  consequence,  it  used  to  be 
professorially  demanded  that  all  dramatic  music 
should  present  the  same  double  aspect.  The  de- 
mand was  unreasonable,  since  symmetrical  versifica- 
tion is  no  merit  in  dramatic  music:  one  might  as  well 
stipulate  that  a  dinner  fork  should  be  constructed  so 
as  to  serve  also  as  a  tablecloth.  It  was  an  ignorant  de- 
mand too,  because  it  is  not  true  that  the  composers  of 
these  exceptional  examples  were  always,  or  even  often, 
able  to  combine  dramatic  expression  with  symmetrical 
versification.  Side  by  side  with  Dalla  sua  pace  we 
have  //  mio  tesoro  and  Non  mi  dir,  in  which  exquis- 
itely expressive  opening  phrases  lead  to  decorative 
passages  which  are  as  grotesque  from  the  dramatic 
point  of  view  as  the  music  which  Alberic  sings  when 
he  is  slipping  and  sneezing  in  the  Rhine  mud  is  from 
the  decorative  point  of  view.  Further,  there  is  to  be 
considered  the  mass  of  shapeless  "dry  recitative" 
which  separates  these  symmetrical  numbers,  and 
which  might  have  been  raised  to  considerable  dram- 
atic and  musical  importance  had  it  been  incorporated 


134         The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

into  a  continuous  musical  fabric  by  thematic  treat- 
ment. Finally,  Mozart's  most  dramatic  finales  and 
concerted  numbers  are  more  or  less  in  sonata  form, 
like  symphonic  movements,  and  must  therefore  be 
classed  as  musical  prose.  And  sonata  form  dictates 
repetitions  and  recapitulations  from  which  the  per- 
fectly unconventional  form  adopted  by  Wagner  is 
free.  On  the  whole,  there  is  more  scope  for  both  rep- 
etition and  convention  in  the  old  form  than  in  the  new; 
and  the  poorer  a  composer's  musical  gift  is,  the  surer 
he  is  to  resort  to  the  eighteenth  century  patterns  to 
eke  out  his  invention. 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

WHEN  Wagner  was  born  in  1813,  music  had  newly 
become  the  most  astonishing,  the  most  fascinating, 
the  most  miraculous  art  in  the  world.  Mozart's  Don 
Giovanni  had  made  all  musical  Europe  conscious  of 
the  enchantments  of  the  modern  orchestra  and  of  the 
perfect  adaptability  of  music  to  the  subtlest  needs  of 
the  dramatist.  Beethoven  had  shown  how  those  in- 
articulate mood-poems  which  surge  through  men  who 
have,  like  himself,  no  exceptional  command  of  words, 
can  be  written  down  in  music  as  symphonies.  Not 
that  Mozart  and  Beethoven  invented  these  applica- 
tions of  their  art;  but  they  were  the  first  whose  works 
made  it  clear  that  the  dramatic  and  subjective  powers 
of  sound  were  enthralling  enough  to  stand  by  them- 
selves quite  apart  from  the  decorative  musical  struc- 
tures of  which  they  had  hitherto  been  a  mere  feature. 
After  the  finales  in  Figaro  and  Don  Giovanni,  the 
possibility  of  the  modern  music  drama  lay  bare. 
After  the  symphonies  of  Beethoven  it  was  certain  that 
the  poetry  that  lies  too  deep  for  words  does  not  lie  too 
deep  for  music,  and  that  the  vicissitudes  of  the  soul, 
from  the  roughest  fun  to  the  loftiest  aspiration,  can 


136         The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

make  symphonies  without  the  aid  of  dance  tunes. 
As  much,  perhaps,  will  be  claimed  for  the  preludes 
and  fugues  of  Bach;  but  Bach's  method  was  un- 
attainable: his  compositions  were  wonderful  webs 
of  exquisitely  beautiful  Gothic  traceries  in  sound, 
quite  beyond  all  ordinary  human  talent.  Beethoven's 
far  blunter  craft  was  thoroughly  popular  and  practic- 
able: not  to  save  his  soul  could  he  have  drawn  one 
long  Gothic  line  in  sound  as  Bach  could,  much  less 
have  woven  several  of  them  together  with  so  apt  a 
harmony  that  even  when  the  composer  is  unmoved 
its  progressions  saturate  themselves  with  the  emotion 
which  (as  modern  critics  are  a  little  apt  to  forget) 
springs  as  warmly  from  our  delicately  touched  admira- 
tion as  from  our  sympathies,  and  sometimes  makes  us 
give  a  composer  credit  for  pathetic  intentions  which  he 
does  not  entertain,  just  as  a  boy  imagines  a  treasure 
of  tenderness  and  noble  wisdom  in  the  beauty  of  a 
woman.  Besides,  Bach  set  comic  dialogue  to  music 
exactly  as  he  set  the  recitatives  of  the  Passion,  there 
being  for  him,  apparently,  only  one  recitative  possible, 
and  that  the  musically  best.  He  reserved  the  ex- 
pression of  his  merry  mood  for  the  regular  set  num- 
bers in  which  he  could  make  one  of  his  wonderful 
contrapuntal  traceries  of  pure  ornament  with  the 
requisite  gaiety  of  line  and  movement.  Beethoven 
bowed  to  no  ideal  of  beauty:  he  only  sought  the  ex- 
pression for  his  feeling.  To  him  a  joke  was  a  joke; 
and  if  it  sounded  funny  in  music  he  was  satisfied. 
Until  the  old  habit  of  judging  all  music  by  its  decora- 
tive symmetry  had  worn  out,  musicians  were  shocked 


The  Nineteenth  Century        137 

by  his  symphonies,  and,  misunderstanding  his  integ- 
rity, openly  questioned  his  sanity.  But  to  those  who 
were  not  looking  for  pretty  new  sound  patterns,  but 
were  longing  for  the  expression  of  their  moods  in 
music,  he  achieved  a  revelation,  because,  being  single 
in  his  aim  to  express  his  own  moods,  he  anticipated 
with  revolutionary  courage  and  frankness  all  the  moods 
of  the  rising  generations  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

The  result  was  inevitable.  In  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury it  was  no  longer  necessary  to  be  a  born  pattern 
designer  in  sound  to  be  a  composer.  One  had  but  to 
be  a  dramatist  or  a  poet  completely  susceptible  to  the 
dramatic  and  descriptive  powers  of  sound.  A  race 
of  literary  and  theatrical  musicians  appeared;  and 
Meyerbeer,  the  first  of  them,  made  an  extraordinary 
impression.  The  frankly  delirious  description  of  his 
Robert  the  Devil  in  Balzac's  short  story  entitled 
Gambra,  and  Goethe's  astonishingly  mistaken  no- 
tion that  he  could  have  composed  music  for  Faust, 
show  how  completely  the  enchantments  of  the  new 
dramatic  music  upset  the  judgment  of  artists  of 
eminent  discernment.  Meyerbeer  was,  people  said 
(old  gentlemen  still  say  so  in  Paris),  the  successor  of 
Beethoven:  he  was,  if  a  less  perfect  musician  than  Mo- 
zart, a  profounder  genius.  Above  all,  he  was  original 
and  daring.  Wagner  himself  raved  about  the  duet  in 
the  fourth  act  of  Les  Huguenots  as  wildly  as  anyone. 

Yet  all  this  effect  of  originality  and  profundity  was 
produced  by  a  quite  limited  talent  for  turning  striking 
phrases,  exploiting  certain  curious  and  rather  catch- 
ing rhythms  and  modulations,  and  devising  sug- 


138         The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

gestive  or  eccentric  instrumentation.  On  its  decor- 
ative side,  it  was  the  same  phenomenon  in  music  as 
the  Baroque  school  in  architecture:  an  energetic 
struggle  to  enliven  organic  decay  by  mechanical 
oddities  and  novelties.  Meyerbeer  was  no  sym- 
phonist.  He  could  not  apply  the  thematic  system  to 
his  striking  phrases,  and  so  had  to  cobble  them 
into  metric  patterns  in  the  old  style;  and  as  he  was  no 
"absolute  musician"  either,  he  hardly  got  his  metric 
patterns  beyond  mere  quadrille  tunes,  which  were 
either  wholly  undistinguished,  or  else  made  remark- 
able by  certain  brusqueries  which,  in  the  true  rococo 
manner,  owed  their  singularity  to  their  senselessness. 
He  could  produce  neither  a  thorough  music  drama 
nor  a  charming  opera.  But  with  all  this,  and  worse, 
Meyerbeer  had  some  genuine  dramatic  energy,  and 
even  passion;  and  sometimes  rose  to  the  occasion  in  a 
manner  which,  whilst  the  imagination  of  his  con- 
temporaries remained  on  fire  with  the  novelties  of 
dramatic  music,  led  them  to  overrate  him  with  an  ex- 
travagance which  provoked  Wagner  to  conduct  a 
long  critical  campaign  against  his  leadership.  Thirty 
years  ago  this  campaign  was  inevitably  ascribed  to  the 
professional  jealousy  of  a  disappointed  rival.  Now- 
adays young  people  cannot  understand  how  anyone 
could  ever  have  taken  Meyerbeer's  influence  serious- 
ly. Those  who  remember  how  his  reputation  stood 
half  a  century  ago,  and  who  realize  what  a  no- 
thoroughfare  the  path  he  opened  proved  to  be,  even 
to  himself,  know  how  inevitable  and  how  impersonal 
Wagner's  attack  was. 


The  Nineteenth  Century       139 

Wagner  was  the  literary  musician  par  excellence. 
He  could  not,  like  Mozart  and  Beethoven,  produce 
decorative  tone  structures  independently  of  any  dram- 
atic or  poetic  subject  matter,  because,  that  craft 
being  no  longer  necessary  for  his  purpose,  he  did  not 
cultivate  it.  As  Shakespeare,  compared  with  Tenny- 
son, appears  to  have  an  exclusively  dramatic  talent, 
so  exactly  does  Wagner  compared  with  Mendelssohn. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  had  not  to  go  to  third  rate 
literary  hacks  for  "librettos"  to  set  to  music:  he 
produced  his  own  dramatic  poems,  thus  giving 
dramatic  integrity  to  opera,  and  making  symphony 
articulate.  A  Beethoven  symphony  (except  the  ar- 
ticulate part  of  the  ninth)  expresses  noble  feeling, 
but  not  thought:  it  has  moods,  but  no  ideas.  Wagner 
added  thought  and  produced  the  music  drama. 
Mozart's  loftiest  opera,  his  Ring,  so  to  speak,  The 
Magic  Flute,  has  a  libretto  which,  though  none 
the  worse  for  seeming,  like  The  Rhine  Gold,  the  mer- 
est Christmas  tomfoolery  to  shallow  spectators,  is  the 
product  of  a  talent  immeasurably  inferior  to  Mozart's 
own.  The  libretto  of  Don  Giovanni  is  coarse  and 
trivial:  its  transfiguration  by  Mozart's  music  may  be 
a  marvel;  but  nobody  will  venture  to  contend  that 
such  transfigurations,  however  seductive,  can  be  as 
satisfactory  as  tone  poetry  or  drama  in  which  the 
musician  and  the  poet  are  at  the  same  level.  Here, 
then,  we  have  the  simple  secret  of  Wagner's  pre- 
eminence as  a  dramatic  musician.  He  wrote  the 
poems  as  well  as  composed  the  music  of  his  "  stage 
festival  plays,"  as  he  called  them. 


140         The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

Up  to  a  certain  point  in  his  career  Wagner  paid 
the  penalty  of  undertaking  two  arts  instead  of  one. 
Mozart  had  his  trade  as  a  musician  at  his  fingers' 
ends  when  he  was  twenty,  because  he  had  served  an 
arduous  apprenticeship  to  that  trade  and  no  other. 
Wagner  was  very  far  from  having  attained  equal 
mastery  at  thirty-five:  indeed  he  himself  has  told  us 
that  not  until  he  had  passed  the  age  at  which  Mozart 
died  did  he  compose  with  that  complete  spontaneity 
of  musical  expression  which  can  only  be  attained  by 
winning  entire  freedom  from  all  preoccupation  with 
the  difficulties  of  technical  processes.  But  when  that 
time  came,  he  was  not  only  a  consummate  musician, 
like  Mozart,  but  a  dramatic  poet  and  a  critical  and 
philosophical  essayist,  exercising  a  considerable  influ- 
ence on  his  century.  The  sign  of  this  consummation 
was  his  ability  at  last  to  play  with  his  art,  and  thus  to 
add  to  his  already  famous  achievements  in  sentimental 
drama  that  lighthearted  art  of  comedy  of  which  the 
greatest  masters,  like  Moliere  and  Mozart,  are  so 
much  rarer  than  the  tragedians  and  sentimentalists. 
It  was  then  that  he  composed  the  first  two  acts  of 
Siegfried,  and  later  on  The  Mastersingers,  a  professed- 
ly comedic  work,  and  a  quite  Mozartian  garden  of 
melody,  hardly  credible  as  the  work  of  the  strain- 
ing artificer  of  Tannhauser.  Only,  as  no  man  ever 
learns  to  do  one  thing  by  doing  something  else,  how- 
ever closely  allied  the  two  things  may  be,  Wagner 
still  produced  no  music  independently  of  his  poems. 
The  overture  to  The  Mastersingers  is  delightful  when 
you  know  what  it  is  all  about;  but  only  those  to 


The  Nineteenth  Century       141 

whom  it  came  as  a  concert  piece  without  any  such 
clue,  and  who  judged  its  reckless  counterpoint  by  the 
standard  of  Bach  and  of  Mozart's  Magic  Flute  over- 
ture, can  realize  how  atrocious  it  used  to  sound  to 
musicians  of  the  old  school.  When  I  first  heard  it, 
with  the  clear  march  of  the  polyphony  in  Bach's  B 
minor  Mass  fresh  in  my  memory,  I  confess  I  thought 
that  the  parts  had  got  dislocated,  and  that  some  of 
the  band  were  half  a  bar  behind  the  others.  Perhaps 
they  were;  but  now  that  I  am  familiar  with  the  work, 
and  with  Wagner's  harmony,  I  can  still  quite  under- 
stand certain  passages  producing  that  effect  on  an  ad- 
mirer of  Bach  even  when  performed  with  perfect 
accuracy. 


THE  MUSIC  OF  THE  FUTURE 

THE  success  of  Wagner  has  been  so  prodigious 
that  to  his  dazzled  disciples  it  seems  that  the  age  of 
what  he  called  "absolute  music  must  be  at  an  end, 
and  the  musical  future  destined  to  be  an  exclusively 

j 

Wagnerian  one  inaugurated  at  Bayreuth.  All  great 
geniuses  produce  this  illusion.  Wagner  did  not  be- 
gin a  movement:  he  consummated  it.  He  was  the 
summit  of  the  nineteenth  century  school  of  dramatic 
music  in  the  same  sense  as  Mozart  was  the  summit 
(the  word  is  Gounod's)  of  the  eighteenth  century 
school.  And  those  who  attempt  to  carry  on  his 
Bayreuth  tradition  will  assuredly  share  the  fate  of  the 
forgotten  purveyors  of  second-hand  Mozart  a  hundred 
years  ago.  As  to  the  expected  supersession  of  ab- 
solute music,  it  is  sufficient  to  point  to  the  fact  that 
Germany  produced  two  absolute  musicians  of  the 
first  class  during  Wagner's  lifetime:  one,  the  greatly 
gifted  Goetz,  who  died  young;  the  other,  Brahms, 
whose  absolute  musical  endowment  was  as  extraor- 
dinary as  his  thought  was  commonplace.  Wagner 
had  for  him  the  contempt  of  the  original  thinker  for 


The  Music  of  the  Future       143 

the  man  of  second-hand  ideas,  and  of  the  strenuously 
dramatic  musician  for  mere  brute  musical  faculty; 
but  though  his  contempt  was  perhaps  deserved  by  the 
Triumphlieds,  and  Schicksalslieds,  and  Elegies  and 
Requiems  in  which  Brahms  took  his  brains  so  serious- 
ly, nobody  can  listen  to  Brahms'  natural  utterance  of 
the  richest  absolute  music,  especially  in  his  chamber 
compositions,  without  rejoicing  in  his  amazing  gift. 
A  reaction  to  absolute  music,  starting  partly  from 
Brahms,  and  partly  from  such  revivals  of  medieval 
music  as  those  of  De  Lange  in  Holland  and  Mr. 
Arnold  Dolmetsch  in  England,  is  both  likely  and  pro- 
mising; whereas  there  is  no  more  hope  in  attempts 
to  out- Wagner  Wagner  in  music  drama  than  there 
was  in  the  old  attempts — or  for  the  matter  of  that, 
the  new  ones — to  make  Handel  the  starting  point 
of  a  great  school  of  oratorio. 


BAYREUTH 

WHEN  the  Bayreuth  Festival  Playhouse  was  at  last 
completed,  and  opened  in  1876  with  the  first  per- 
formance of  The  Ring,  European  society  was  com- 
pelled to  admit  that  Wagner  was  "  a  success."  Royal 
personages,  detesting  his  music,  sat  out  the  perform- 
ances in  the  row  of  boxes  set  apart  for  princes.  They 
all  complimented  him  on  the  astonishing  "push"  with 
which,  in  the  teeth  of  all  obstacles,  he  had  turned  a 
fabulous  and  visionary  project  into  a  concrete  com- 
mercial reality,  patronized  by  the  public  at  a  pound  a 
head.  It  is  as  well  to  know  that  these  congratulations 
had  no  other  effect  upon  Wagner  than  to  open  his 
eyes  to  the  fact  that  the  Bayreuth  experiment,  as  an 
attempt  to  evade  the  ordinary  social  and  commercial 
conditions  of  theatrical  enterprise,  was  a  failure.  His 
own  account  of  it  contrasts  the  reality  with  his  inten- 
tions in  a  vein  which  would  be  bitter  if  it  were  not  so 
humorous.  The  precautions  taken  to  keep  the  seats 
out  of  the  hands  of  the  frivolous  public  and  in  the 
hands  of  earnest  disciples,  banded  together  in  little 
Wagner  Societies  throughout  Europe,  had  ended  in 
their  forestalling  by  ticket  speculators  and  their  sale 


Bayreuth  145 

to  just  the  sort  of  idle  globe-trotting  tourists  against 
Vvhom  the  temple  was  to  have  been  strictly  closed. 
The  money,  supposed  to  be  contributed  by  the  faith- 
ful, was  begged  by  energetic  subscription-hunting 
ladies  from  people  who  must  have  had  the  most 
grotesque  misconceptions  of  the  composer's  aims — 
among  others,  the  Khedive  of  Egypt  and  the  Sultan 
of  Turkey! 

The  only  change  that  has  occurred  since  then  is 
that  subscriptions  are  no  longer  needed;  for  the 
Festival  Playhouse  apparently  pays  its  own  way  now, 
and  is  commercially  on  the  same  footing  as  any  other 
theatre.  The  only  qualification  required  from  the 
visitor  is  money.  A  Londoner  spends  twenty  pounds 
on  a  visit:  a  native  Bayreuther  spends  one  pound. 
In  either  case  "the  Folk,"  on  whose  behalf  Wagner 
turned  out  in  1849,  are  effectually  excluded;  and  the 
Festival  Playhouse  must  therefore  be  classed  as  in- 
finitely less  Wagnerian  in  its  character  than  Hamp- 
ton Court  Palace.  Nobody  knew  this  better  than 
Wagner;  and  nothing  can  be  further  ofF  the  mark 
than  to  chatter  about  Bayreuth  as  if  it  had  succeeded 
in  escaping  from  the  conditions  of  our  modern  civili- 
zation any  more  than  the  Grand  Opera  in  Paris  or 
London. 

Within  these  conditions,  however,  it  effected  a  new 
departure  in  that  excellent  German  institution,  the 
summer  theatre.  Unlike  our  opera  houses,  which  are 
constructed  so  that  the  audience  may  present  a  splen- 
did pageant  to  the  delighted  manager,  it  is  designed 
to  secure  an  uninterrupted  view  of  the  stage,  and  an 


146         The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

undisturbed  hearing  of  the  music,  to  the  audience. 
The  dramatic  purpose  of  the  performances  is  taken 
with  entire  and  elaborate  seriousness  as  the  sole  pur- 
pose of  them;  and  the  management  is  jealous  for  the 
reputation  of  Wagner.  The  commercial  success  which 
has  followed  this  policy  shows  that  the  public  wants 
summer  theatres  of  the  highest  class.  There  is  no 
reason  why  the  experiment  should  not  be  tried  in 
England.  If  our  enthusiasm  for  Handel  can  sup- 
port Handel  Festivals,  laughably  dull,  stupid  and 
anti-Handelian  as  these  choral  monstrosities  are,  as 
well  as  annual  provincial  festivals  on  the  same  model, 
there  is  no  likelihood  of  a  Wagner  Festival  failing. 
Suppose,  for  instance,  a  Wagner  theatre  were  built 
at  Hampton  Court  or  on  Richmond  Hill,  not  to  say 
Margate  pier,  so  that  we  could  have  a  delightful 
summer  evening  holiday,  Bayreuth  fashion,  passing 
the  hours  between  the  acts  in  the  park  or  on  the  river 
before  sunset,  is  it  seriously  contended  that  there 
would  be  any  lack  of  visitors  ?  If  a  little  of  the  money 
that  is  wasted  on  grand  stands,  Eiffel  towers,  and  dis- 
mal Halls  by  the  Sea,  all  as  much  tied  to  brief  annual 
seasons  as  Bayreuth,  were  applied  in  this  way,  the 
profit  would  be  far  more  certain  and  the  social 
utility  prodigiously  greater.  Any  English  enthusiasm 
for  Bayreuth  that  does  not  take  the  form  of  clamor 
for  a  Festival  Playhouse  in  England  may  be  set  aside 
as  mere  pilgrimage  mania. 

Those  who  go  to  Bayreuth  never  repent  it,  although 
the  performances  there  are  often  far  from  delect- 
able. The  singing  is  sometimes  tolerable,  and  some- 


Bayreuth  147 

times  abominable.  Some  of  the  singers  are  mere  ani- 
mated beer  casks,  too  lazy  and  conceited  to  prac- 
tise the  self-control  and  physical  training  that  is  ex- 
pected as  a  matter  of  course  from  an  acrobat,  a  jockey 
or  a  pugilist.  The  women's  dresses  are  prudish  and 
absurd.  It  is  true  that  Kundry  no  longer  wears  an 
early  Victorian  ball  dress  with  "ruchings,"  and  that 
Freia  has  been  provided  with  a  quaintly  modish 
copy  of  the  flowered  gown  of  Spring  in  Botticelli's 
famous  picture;  but  the  mailclad  Brynhild  still  climbs 
the  mountains  with  her  legs  carefully  hidden  in  a 
long  white  skirt,  and  looks  so  exactly  like  Mrs.  Leo 
Hunter  as  Minerva  that  it  is  quite  impossible  to  feel  a 
ray  of  illusion  whilst  looking  at  her.  The  ideal  of 
womanly  beauty  aimed  at  reminds  Englishmen  of  the 
barmaids  of  the  seventies,  when  the  craze  for  golden 
hair  was  at  its  worst.  Further,  whilst  Wagner's 
stage  directions  are  sometimes  disregarded  as  unin- 
telligently  as  at  Covent  Garden,  an  intolerably  old- 
fashioned  tradition  of  half  rhetorical,  half  historical- 
pictorial  attitude  and  gesture  prevails.  The  most 
striking  moments  of  the  drama  are  conceived  as 
tableaux  vivants  with  posed  models,  instead  of  as 
passages  of  action,  motion  and  life. 

I  need  hardly  add  that  the  supernatural  powers 
of  control  attributed  by  credulous  pilgrims  to  Madame 
Wagner  do  not  exist.  Prima  donnas  and  tenors  are  as 
unmanageable  at  Bayreuth  as  anywhere  else.  Casts 
are  capriciously  changed;  stage  business  is  in- 
sufficiently rehearsed;  the  public  are  compelled  to 
listen  to  a  Brynhild  or  Siegfried  of  fifty  when  they 


148         The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

have  carefully  arranged  to  see  one  of  twenty-five, 
much  as  in  any  ordinary  opera  house.  Even  the  con- 
ductors upset  the  arrangements  occasionally.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  we  leave  the  vagaries  of  the  stars  out 
of  account,  we  may  safely  expect  always  that  in 
thoroughness  of  preparation  of  the  chief  work  of 
the  season,  in  strenuous  artistic  pretentiousness,  in 
pious  conviction  that  the  work  is  of  such  enormous 
importance  as  to  be  worth  doing  well  at  all  costs,  the 
Bayreuth  performances  will  deserve  their  reputation. 
The  band  is  placed  out  of  sight  of  the  audience,  with 
the  more  formidable  instruments  beneath  the  stage, 
so  that  the  singers  have  not  to  sing  through  the  brass. 
The  effect  is  quite  perfect. 

BAYREUTH    IN    ENGLAND 

I  purposely  dwell  on  the  faults  of  Bayreuth  in 
order  to  show  that  there  is  no  reason  in  the  world 
why  as  good  and  better  performances  of  The  Ring 
should  not  be  given  in  England.  Wagner's  scores  are 
now  before  the  world;  and  neither  his  widow  nor  his 
son  can  pretend  to  handle  them  with  greater  authority 
than  any  artist  who  feels  the  impulse  to  interpret 
them.  Nobody  will  ever  know  what  Wagner  himself 
thought  of  the  artists  who  established  the  Bayreuth 
tradition:  he  was  obviously  not  in  a  position  to 
criticize  them.  For  instance,  had  Rubini  survived  to 
create  Siegmund,  it  is  quite  certain  that  we  should  not 
have  had  from  Wagner's  pen  so  amusing  and  vivid  a 
description  as  we  have  of  his  Ottavio  in  the  old  Paris 


Bayreuth  149 

days.  Wagner  was  under  great  obligations  to  the 
heroes  and  heroines  of  1876;  and  he  naturally  said 
nothing  to  disparage  their  triumphs;  but  there  is  no 
reason  to  believe  that  all  or  indeed  any  of  them 
satisfied  him  as  Schnorr  of  Carolsfeld  satisfied  him 
as  Tristan,  or  Schroder  Devrient  as  Fidelio.  It  is 
just  as  likely  as  not  that  the  next  Schnorr  or  Schroder 
may  arise  in  England.  If  that  should  actually  happen, 
neither  of  them  will  need  any  further  authority  than 
their  own  genius  and  Wagner's  scores  for  their 
guidance.  Certainly  the  less  their  spontaneous  im- 
pulses are  sophisticated  by  the  very  stagey  traditions 
which  Bayreuth  is  handing  down  from  the  age  of 
Crummies,  the  better. 

WAGNERIAN    SINGERS 

No  nation  need  have  much  difficulty  in  producing 
a  race  of  Wagnerian  singers.  With  the  single  ex- 
ception of  Handel,  no  composer  has  written  music 
so  well  calculated  to  make  its  singers  vocal  athletes 
as  Wagner.  Abominably  as  the  Germans  sing,  it  is 
astonishing  how  they  thrive  physically  on  his  leading 
parts.  His  secret  is  the  Handelian  secret.  Instead 
of  specializing  his  vocal  parts  after  the  manner  of 
Verdi  and  Gounod  for  high  sopranos,  screaming  ten- 
ors, and  high  baritones  with  an  effective  compass  of 
about  a  fifth  at  the  extreme  tiptop  of  their  ranges,  and 
for  contraltos  with  chest  registers  forced  all  over 
their  compass  in  the  manner  of  music  hall  singers,  he 
employs  the  entire  range  of  the  human  voice  freely, 
demanding  from  everybody  very  nearly  two  effective 


150         The  Perfect  Wagnerite 

octaves,  so  that  the  voice  is  well  exercised  all  over, 
and  one  part  of  it  relieves  the  other  healthily  and 
continually.  He  uses  extremely  high  notes  very 
sparingly,  and  is  especially  considerate  in  the  mat- 
ter of  instrumental  accompaniment.  Even  when  the 
singer  appears  to  have  all  the  thunders  of  the  full 
orchestra  raging  against  him,  a  glance  at  the  score 
will  show  that  he  is  well  heard,  not  because  of  any  ex- 
ceptionally stentorian  power  in  his  voice,  but  because 
Wagner  meant  him  to  be  heard  and  took  the  greatest 
care  not  to  overwhelm  him.  Such  brutal  opacities  of 
accompaniment  as  we  find  in  Rossini's  Stabat  or 
Verdi's  Trovatore,  where  the  strings  play  a  rum-turn 
accompaniment  whilst  the  entire  wind  band  blares 
away,  fortissimo,  in  unison  with  the  unfortunate 
singer,  are  never  to  be  found  in  Wagner's  work.  Even 
in  an  ordinary  opera  house,  with  the  orchestra  ranged 
directly  between  the  singers  and  the  audience,  his 
instrumentation  is  more  transparent  to  the  human 
voice  than  that  of  any  other  composer  since  Mozart. 
At  the  Bayreuth  Biihnenfestspielhaus,  with  the  brass 
under  the  stage,  it  is  perfectly  so. 

On  every  point,  then,  a  Wagner  theatre  and 
Wagner  festivals  are  much  more  generally  practic- 
able than  the  older  and  more  artificial  forms  of 
dramatic  music.  A  presentable  performance  of  The 
Ring  is  a  big  undertaking  only  in  the  sense  in  which 
the  construction  of  a  railway  is  a  big  undertaking: 
that  is,,  it  requires  plenty  of  work  and  plenty  of 
professional  skill;  but  it  does  not,  like  the  old 
operas  and  oratorios,  require  those  extraordinary 


Bayreuth  151 

vocal  gifts  which  only  a  few  individuals  scattered  here 
and  there  throughout  Europe  are  born  with.  Singers 
who  could  never  execute  the  roulades  of  Semiramis, 
Assur,  and  Arsaces  in  Rossini's  Semiramide,  could 
sing  the  parts  of  Brynhild,  Wotan  and  Erda  without 
missing  a  note.  Any  Englishman  can  understand 
this  if  he  considers  for  a  moment  the  difference 
between  a  Cathedral  service  and  an  Italian  opera  at 
Covent  Garden.  The  service  is  a  much  more  serious 
matter  than  the  opera.  Yet  provincial  talent  is  suffi- 
cient for  it,  if  the  requisite  industry  and  devotion  are 
forthcoming.  Let  us  admit  that  geniuses  of  European 
celebrity  are  indispensable  at  the  Opera  (though  I 
know  better,  having  seen  lusty  troopers  and  porters, 
without  art  or  manners,  accepted  by  fashion  as  prin- 
cipal tenors  at  that  institution  during  the  long  interval 
between  Mario  and  Jean  de  Reszke);  but  let  us  re- 
member that  Bayreuth  has  recruited  its  Parsifals 
from  the  peasantry,  and  that  the  artisans  of  a  village 
in  the  Bavarian  Alps  are  capable  of  a  famous  and 
elaborate  Passion  Play,  and  then  consider  whether 
England  is  so  poor  in  talent  that  its  amateurs  must 
journey  to  the  centre  of  Europe  to  witness  a  Wagner 
Festival. 

The  truth  is,  there  is  nothing  wrong  with  England 
except  the  wealth  which  attracts  teachers  of  singing 
to  her  shores  in  sufficient  numbers  to  extinguish  the 
voices  of  all  natives  who  have  any  talent  as  singers. 
Our  salvation  must  come  from  the  class  that  is  too 
poor  to  have  lessons. 


of  CalifomiaLib 


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